Year in Review: 2015 in 12 charts

By Donna Barne and Tariq Khokhar

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Now that we’ve reached the end of 2015, it’s clear this was a year of major milestones, emerging trends, and new beginnings. Among other things, 2015 marked a historic drop in poverty, a major climate change agreement, and record low child and maternal mortality rates. Take a look at what the data show.
1. The Global Poverty Rate Fell below 10%
The share of the world’s population living in extreme poverty is projected to hit a historic low of 9.6% of in 2015 — falling from 37.1% in 1990. New estimates show 702 million people living below the updated global poverty line of $1.90 per day, with the majority of them in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The milestone was hailed as the “best news in the world today” by World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim, and marks real progress on the road to ending extreme poverty by 2030.
Source: World Bank Global Monitoring Report