More people living in extreme poverty than previously thought â€" WB

UNITED NATIONS: â€" The World Bank has revised upward its estimates of the number of the world’s poor from nearly 1 billion to 1.4 billion, drawing on new data that indicates that poverty is more widespread across the developing world than previously thought.

But despite the new figures, a new study by the agency shows that great strides continue to be made in the fight against poverty.

“The new data confirm that the world will likely reach the first Millennium Development Goal [MDG] of halving the 1990 level of poverty by 2015 and that poverty has fallen by about one percentage point a year since 1981,� said Justin Lin, the World Bank’s Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of Development Economics.