The good, the bad and the hideous

WHEN the Millennium Development Goals were adopted in 2000 they seemed Utopian. But the most important one was achieved five years early. This was to halve, by 2015, the share of people globally living on under $1.25 a day, which was 36% in 1990. Most progress was in China, where the proportion fell from 60% in 1990 to 12% in 2010. Other regions missed their target. In South Asia it fell from 51% to 30%. In Sub-Saharan Africa it went from 56% to 48%. Still, more than 700m people struggled out of extreme poverty in that period.