UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 6 (UPI) -- A U.N. report issued in New York showing 350 million people escaped poverty in the last 10 years shows most of the world's poor still live in rural areas.
The Rural Poverty Report 2011, released Monday by the United Nations' International Fund for Agricultural Development, found an overall drop of extreme poverty -- people living less on $1.25 per day -- in rural areas over the past decade from 48 percent to 34 percent.
The non-government organization's report also highlighted progress in rural areas of East Asia, primarily in China, where the number of extreme poor fell by about two-thirds during the past decade.
The report said it found 70 percent of the developing world's 1.4 billion extremely poor people still live in rural areas, the agency said.
Rural poverty is acute in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Sub-Saharan Africa has nearly a third of the world's extremely poor rural people, whose numbers swelled from 268 million to 306 million during the last decade, the United Nations unit said.
"While Sub-Saharan Africa's rate of extreme poverty in rural areas declined from 65 (percent) to 62 percent, it remains by far the highest of any region," the International Fund for Agricultural Development said.
Rural poverty rates dropped slightly in the last 10 years in South Asia, which has the largest number of poor rural people -- about 500 million -- of any region or sub-region, the report said.
The report said volatile food prices, the uncertainties and effects of climate change, and constraints on natural resource constraints would complicate efforts to reduce rural poverty.
However, it said changes in agricultural markets provide new and promising opportunities for the developing world's farmers to boost their productivity. UPI
