This marks a historic rupture. For the first time, poverty is not growing just because population is growing. Because of this reduction, the number of people in extreme poverty is now slightly less than it was in 1820. Then it was around one billion, while today it is 700 million. If this does not sound like progress, you should note that in 1820, the world only had around sixty million people who did not live in extreme poverty. Today more than 6.5 billion people do not live in extreme poverty. So the risk of living in poverty has been reduced from ninety-four per cent to less than eleven per
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