Over the past thirty years, as many countries have struggled to liberalize their economies and improve 2 the quality of their policies, global per capita income has steadily risen.
I recognize that poverty rates are notoriously hard to quantify, but according to a recent study, the share of the world's population living on less than $ per day, a commonly used poverty threshold, has fallen dramatically over the past three decades--from 17 percent in 1970 to 7 percent in 1998, representing a decline of 200 3 million people.