SINCE 1992, Oct 17 has been recognised as the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty – or more simply, End Poverty Day. It is a day for the world to engage on the progress made and actions needed to end poverty.

To mark this year’s End Poverty Day, the World Bank released its biennial Poverty and Shared Prosperity Report “Piecing Together the Poverty Puzzle”, which documents the dramatic reduction in extreme poverty achieved from 1990 to 2015. In the span of 25 years, the share of people around the world living within the extreme poverty line fell from 36% to 10% (from 1.9 billion to 736 million), despite global population growing from five to seven billion.