Extreme poverty, by the World Bank standard of USD 1.25 per day at purchasing power parity, had virtually disappeared. The share of the population living below the subsistence income level fell from its 2001 peak (59% in rural areas and 36% in urban areas) to 8.8% in rural areas and 2.4% in urban areas in 2011. The pattern of a sharp increase in poverty in the 1990s followed by a rapid decline after 2001 is clear, even though the two poverty lines differ. A wide rural-urban poverty gap opened up in 2001.