Poverty’s long farewell

AN UNWIELDY forum, the United Nations struggles to get nations to agree to firm targets, let alone achieve them. So it is deservedly proud of having already met its goal of halving the share of people living in extreme poverty by the end of this year, compared with the level of 1990. In fact, the milestone was reached five years early. In 1990, 36% of the world’s population lived in abject poverty. By 2010 this was down to 18%. In absolute terms, the number of those in such desperate straits has fallen from 1.9 billion to about 1 billion today.