The greatest reduction was estimated for East Asia and Pacific5 - the only region consistently on track to meet the MDG target of halving the 1990 poverty rates by 2015 - where the number of people living on less than $1.25 a day decreased during this period by almost 0.6 billion while the poverty rate fell from 55 per cent to 17 per cent. Much of the decline was contributed by China. At the other extreme, sub-Saharan Africa lagged behind the other regions in poverty reduction: the poverty rate decreased by only 7 percentage points, from 58 per cent in 1990 to 51 per cent in 2005, while the number of poor increased by 91 million due to population increase.