Out of poverty: decades of economic growth and rising incomes are helping hundreds of millions of people worldwide escape extreme poverty.

• Author: Zissou, Rebecca
• Position: INTERNATIONAL

Dhaki Wako Baneta knows what it's like to struggle to survive. The 26-year-old mother of four lives in a rural Ethiopian village where many people lack running water, access to electricity, and economic opportunities. For years, she'd wake up at 6 in the morning, milk her cows, and walk two hours along dusty roads to town to try to sell the milk. Most days, she'd spend hours in the scorching heat without making a single sale.

But Baneta's life has recently started to improve.

A few years ago, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) introduced her to a store owner in town who agreed to buy her milk on a daily basis. Now she has a steady income. She no longer worries about being unable to feed her children or pay for medicine, and she can spend more time with her family.

"My life is changing," Baneta says.

Stories like Baneta's have become increasingly common in recent years. Worldwide, more people are pulling themselves out of extreme poverty than ever before. According to the World Bank, the number of people living on less than $1.90 a day--the global benchmark for extreme poverty--has dropped by more than half in the past 25 years. In 1990, an estimated 1.9 billion people, or 37 percent of the world population, lived in extreme poverty. Today, about 700 million, or 10 percent, do.

"What we've seen in the last two decades has been remarkable," says Aaron Roesch of USAID. "Never before have so many people been lifted out of poverty in such a short period of time. " Experts say that much of the growth can be attributed to rising economies around the world and huge advancements in technology and medicine. In recent years, governments, humanitarian groups, private companies, and the United Nations (U.N.) have also increased investments in education, health care, and infrastructure--roads, bridges, sewer systems, and electrical grids. Such projects help fuel economic growth and improve people's quality of life.

Now world leaders are working toward an ambitious goal: to eliminate extreme poverty altogether by 2030. Jim Yong Kim, the president of the World Bank, says the key to success lies in growing the economies of developing nations in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Those regions are home to 75 percent of the world's poorest people (see map, facing page).

Kim is optimistic that it can be done: "We are the first generation in human history that can end extreme poverty."

Short, Miserable Lives

For thousands of years, most people lived short lives plagued by hunger, disease, poverty, illiteracy, and other hardships. Even as the rise of modern technology improved conditions in many nations, millions of people worldwide still lacked economic opportunities and were forced to do without necessities like clean water, safe housing, and medication.

But in the past several decades, strong economic growth and rising incomes in a few key regions have led to massive reductions in the number of people living in extreme poverty. The most dramatic example is China, the world's most populous country, with nearly 1.4 billion people.

In recent decades, the Communist country has been transformed from a poor, unstable nation into a global superpower-lifting more than 500 million Chinese from poverty in the process. In 1978, China loosened government control of its economy and encouraged foreign investment, which led to millions of new jobs, mostly in construction and manufacturing. As China's rural poor began moving in huge numbers to cities--where job opportunities are greater--they earned higher wages and had access to better schools and hospitals. Today, 4 percent of China's population lives in extreme poverty, down from 61 percent in 1990.

India, the world's second-most-populous country, with 1.3 billion people, has undergone a similar transformation. In 1991, its government began making many of the same changes as China's, including encouraging international companies to do business there, and growth took off. Since 1993, its rate of extreme poverty has dropped by 25 percent.

In other parts of the world, humanitarian groups and the U.N. have made tremendous progress. Improved health care and vaccines mean that today deadly diseases...