For example, although South Asia has seen a significant decrease in the poverty rate (from 61 per cent in 1981 to 36 per cent in 2008), given the increase in population size this means that the absolute number of the poor increased from 568 million to 571 million over that period (figure II. In sub-Saharan Africa, the absolute number of the poor increased from 205 million to 386 million in the same period, while the poverty rate fell from 52 per cent in 1981to48 per cent in 1981. Whereas in 1981, poverty had been concentrated in East Asia and the Pacific, with 57 per cent of the worlds poor living in that region, by 2008 the concentration of poverty had shifted to South Asia and subSaharan Africa, which now account for 44 per cent and 30 per cent, respectively, of the world’s poor.