There Are Too Many People In The World Living On Less Than $1.25 A Day

Extreme poverty has dropped worldwide, but many parts of the world still have a long way to go.

The UN recently published a report on the current status of their Millennium Development Goals, a set of eight goals addressing the challenges faced in developing countries adopted in 2000.

The first of the goals is to dramatically reduce extreme poverty. Here, from the UN's report, are the proportions of populations in different regions who live on less than $1.25 per day.

Worldwide, this rate has dropped by half in the last two decades, with 36% of the global population in extreme poverty in 1990, and 18% in 2010:

A huge amount of the drop in extreme poverty came from China. In 1990, 60% of China's population was living on under $1.25 per day, and in 2010, only 12% were. Other regions, like Sub-Saharan Africa, saw smaller improvements in their extreme poverty rates.