and China, with more than 85% living in just 20 countries. Since the mid-1990s, there has been a steady decline in both the worldwide poverty rate and the total number of extreme poor. In 1990, the percentage of the global population living in extreme poverty was 43%, but in 2011, that percentage had dropped down to 21%. This halving of the extreme poverty rate falls in line with the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG1) proposed by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who called on the international community at the turn of the century to reduce the percentage of people in extreme poverty by half by 2015. This reduction in extreme poverty took place most notably in China, Indonesia, India, Pakistan and Vietnam. These five countries accounted for the alleviation of 715 million people out of extreme poverty between 1990 and 2010 – more than the global net total of roughly 700 million. This statistical oddity can be explained by the fact that the number of people living in extreme poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa rose from 290 million to 414 million over the same period. However, there have been many positive signs for extensive, global poverty reduction as well. Since 1999, the total number of extreme poor has declined by an average of 50 million per year. Moreover, in 2005, for the first time in recorded history, poverty rates began to fall in every region of the world, including Africa. As aforementioned, the number of people living in extreme poverty has reduced from 1.9 billion to 766 million over the span of the last decades. If we remain on our current trajectory, many economists predict we could reach global zero by 2030–2035, thus ending extreme poverty. Global zero entails a world in which fewer than 3% of the global population lives in extreme poverty (projected under most optimistic scenarios to be fewer than 200 million people). This zero figure is set at 3% in recognition of the fact that some amount of frictional (temporary) poverty will continue to exist, whether it is caused by political conflict or unexpected economic fluctuations, at least for the foreseeable future. However, the Brookings Institution notes that any projection about poverty more than a few years into the future runs the risk of being highly uncertain. This is because changes in consumption and distribution throughout the developing world over the next two decades could result in