China makes remarkable success in poverty reduction despite challenges ahead: WB
23/10/2008 16:01
China has made remarkable success in poverty reduction despite challenges
ahead, according to a report released by the World Bank recently.
In a new
paper, "The developing world is poorer than we thought but no less successful in
the fight against poverty," the Bank revised estimates of poverty since 1981,
finding that 1.4 billion people in the developing world were living on below
US$1.25 a day in 2005, down from 1.9 billion in 1981.
In China, the number of
people living on less than US$1.25 a day in 2005 prices has dropped from 835
million in 1981 to 207 million in 2005.
The World Bank's earlier 2004
estimate had 130 million people in China living on below US$1 a day based on the
1993 consumption purchasing power parity (PPP). Thus, the new calculations
reveal more poor people than assumed earlier, "but China's remarkable success in
reducing poverty still stands," said the report.
The new estimates, which
reflect improvements in internationally comparable price data, offer a much more
accurate picture of the cost of living in developing countries and set a new
poverty line of US$1.25 a day.
They are based on the results of the 2005
International Comparison Program (ICP), released earlier this year.
Martin
Ravallion, director of the World Bank's Development Research Group, hailed
China's progress in reducing poverty.
"China's been enormously successful
against poverty," he said. "I don't think we've ever seen anything in human
history that's comparable."
"In our numbers it's quite striking, we estimate
that 84 percent of the population of China was living on below US$1.25 a day in
1981," he said.
"If you'd have gone to China at that time or maybe in the
late 1970s, you would have been in one of the poorest countries, particularly in
rural areas, in the world. There's no question," he noted.
China's success
against absolute poverty "has clearly played a major role in this overall
progress," said his report, noting "the developing world outside China is not on
track to reaching the Millennium Development Goals for poverty
reduction."
The overall numbers of poor people outside China have remained
fairly flat, with about 1.2 billion people living below that 1.25-dollar marker
outside China. Within China, the number has fallen by 600 million over that time
period.
But Ravallion also warned that China is "poorer than we thought," for
there are still about 16 percent of the population living below poverty line now
in China.
Justin Lin, chief economist and senior vice president for
Development Economics at the World Bank, explained that there were many
distortion in the economic sectors, which slowed China's efforts of poverty
reduction.
"My advice to the Chinese government, my government back home, is
to continue the market-oriented reform, and to make the economic growth more
sustainable," said Lin, a former university professor and the first chief
economist of the World Bank from a developing country.
Xinhua
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