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The World Bank has published its revised poverty statistics. Johan Norberg comments on it here.

The proportion in absolute poverty in developing countries 1981-2005 was reduced by half, from 52% to 26%. And despite an increase in world population by 2 billion, the number in absolute poverty was reduced by 500 million, from 1.9 to 1.4 billion. This means that 57.000 people have left extreme poverty every day since 1981. And the last decade has been the best one.

Although the number of poor people are higher than what we thought before, things are moving in the right direction. Hopefully the trend will continue, although the data does not cover the last couple of years with rising food prices.

Knowing what brings countries and people out of poverty is difficult, and varies from country to country. That is why liberty is important — after all, it is only when being allowed to think freely, and act in a free market, that people can experiment and put their ideas to the test, and although most of these experiments fail a few of them could be the key to better lives for a lot of people, including many that have nothing to do with the original idea. The higher the number of experiments, the more likely it is that a good one will show up.

An interesting discussion on the topic can be seen and heard here, where William Easterly and Arvind Subramanian offer their takes.

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