Translating growth into poverty reduction

Many countries have experienced unprecedented economic growth and a significant reduction in poverty over the past decades.

Globally, a 1-percentage point growth in income has been associated with a decline in poverty of about 2.4 percentage points. But even with relatively high economic growth, poverty reduction has been highly variable across countries, and the benefits of growth have not always reached the poor and vulnerable.

With an average yearly growth rate of 10 percent, China has been able to reduce the number of poor people in the country by nearly three-fourths since 1990. In Latin America and the Caribbean, poverty fell by one-fourth between 1995 and 2005.