Even though China represents the most dramatic decrease, there is a similar spin in the rest of Asia as well as in Africa and Latin America. What happened in the last decade was that global growth accelerated significantly. This acceleration can largely be explained by a near duplication in growth in the poor parts of the world. Growth in developed countries has been almost unchanged.
This could be explained by a wave of reforms sweeping across large parts of the poor world. More and more countries have liberalised their economies simultaneous with opening up to the world for trade and investments. The result is a substantial increase in global trade and a gigantic increase in capital transfer between countries.
With increasing salary levels in many nouveau riche development countries, we notice two interesting trends. First of all, many companies in development countries are looking for new markets and countries where labour costs are still relatively low. Secondly, there is growing institutional competition, where politicians in development countries make major investments in improving entrepreneurship, employment and financial growth. To sum up, these trends mean that global poverty will most likely continue to decrease in the next decade.
Those of us, fortunate enough to be living in the rich part of the world, should encourage this development. We could do this by urging our politicians not to discriminate poor countries in trade agreements with so-called social and ecological clauses. In addition, we could consume products from poor countries. Our consumption benefits their production. Historically, a growing production results in increased employment and salaries which leads to reduced poverty.