An unwieldy forum, the United Nations struggles to get na-tions 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. This conspicuous success has set the stage for a more audacious target: the complete elimination of extreme poverty by 2030. The World Bank has already declared this to be its objective and the un is expected later this year to make it the cornerstone of its new development agenda. The goal is a good one. But the economic outlook for developing countries has dimmed since 2013, when the World Bank first settled on it. That, unfortunately, will make the deadline much harder to meet. On current trends it is likely to be missed, possibly by a wide margin.
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