It is estimated that an additional 55 to 90 million people will be trapped in extreme poverty in 2009 due to the worldwide recession. The number of chronically hungry people is expected to climb to over 1 billion this year, reversing gains in fighting malnutrition and making the need to invest in agriculture especially urgent.
The number of people living on under $1.25/day in the developing world in 2005 was 1.375 billion, or 25% of the population. The MDG target is to halve the 1990 poverty rate (41.7 percent) to 20.9% by 2015. With extreme poverty projected to fall to15% by 2015, it still appears the target will be met, but this may change as the poverty reduction rate slows with declining growth. Sub-Saharan Africa will not meet MDG1.
That’s from the Global Monitoring Report 2009: A Development Emergency. The report says that MDG of halving extreme poverty by 2015 from its 1990 level is still reachable but “risks abound”.
