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The global decline of extreme poverty - was it only China?

Roser, Max
http://ourworldindata.org/the-global-decline-of-extreme-poverty-was-it-only-china/

Publisher:  Our World In Data
Date Written:  07/03/2017
Year Published:  2017  
Resource Type:  Article

The share of the world population living in extreme poverty has fallen very substantially in the last 200 years: from over 80% in 1820 to 10% in the latest estimates. In recent decades, extreme poverty has declined faster than ever before in human history. Often when I point this out – in conversation or on social media – I hear the response 'Yes, but this is only because of China.' This post asks whether this statement is true. Is the substantial decline of global poverty only due to the poverty decline in China?

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

To see whether it was China alone that was responsible for this decline in extreme poverty, we recalculated the share of people living in extreme poverty and disregarded China entirely. This allows us to compare a planet with China to a planet without China. (At the end of the post it is explained how poverty for the non-Chinese world population was calculated.) The chart below shows the results. In blue is the decline of global poverty, in red the decline of poverty excluding China. We see that the reduction of global poverty was very substantial even when we do not take into account the poverty reduction in China. In 1981 almost one third (29%) of the non-Chinese world population was living in extreme poverty. By 2013 this share had fallen to 12%.
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