percentage points per year but only 0.6 percentage point between 2013 and 2015. Forecasts for these trends to 2018 suggest a further slowdown to 0.5 percentage point per year. The pace of reduction slowed particularly in ECA, which was hard-hit by the global recession and subsequent euro area crisis, and reversed in countries that experienced steep recessions (Habib et al. 2010).

In 2015, half of the 736 million people living in extreme poverty could be found in just five countries, two of which are classified as LICs: India, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo (LIC), Ethiopia (LIC), and Bangladesh.<sup>7</sup> Most of the other half are concentrated in other LICs, such as Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Uganda, each of which is home to at least 15 million people living in poverty. In total, LICs and four lower-middle-income countries (India, Nigeria, Bangladesh, and Indonesia) account for over 80 percent of global poverty. The countries with the highest poverty rates are all in Sub-Saharan Africa (and LICs): the Central African Republic (77), Madagascar (77 percent), Burundi (75 percent), South Sudan (73 percent), and the Democratic Republic of Congo (72 percent). Poverty rates are also rising in economies affected by fragility, conflict, and violence (World Bank 2019a).

Longer-run growth trends in EMDEs suggest that the 2030 poverty target is likely out of reach. Even if historical growth trends between 2005-15 are projected forward, the world will not be able to reach the 3 percent global poverty rate target set for 2030. Based on current trends, the share of global poor living in SSA will increase to 87 percent by 2030. To be able to reach the 2030 goal of reducing the global poverty rate to 3 percent, SSA would need to grow by 6 percent per capita per year, with income growth among the bottom 40 percent of the population of 8 percent. In contrast, during 2017-2019, per capita growth in SSA has been near-nil and only a small and declining proportion of EMDEs have achieved such growth in any year since 2009 (World Bank 2019a).

Rapid growth in incomes of the poorest 40 percent of households are key to “shared prosperity.” During 2010-15, incomes of the poorest 40 percent of the population grew particularly rapidly (4.7 percent) in EAP but most slowly in MNA and SSA. In about half of EMDEs, incomes of the poorest 40 percent of the population “caught up” by growing faster than average incomes since 2010. This catching up was particularly pronounced in EAP and MNA (1.3 percentage points faster)—in MNA notwithstanding slow income growth among the poorest 40 percent—and in LAC (1 percentage point faster; Figure 5; World Bank 2018b). In contrast, in more than half of EMDEs in SSA, incomes of the poorest 40 percent of the population have grown more slowly than average incomes, thus widening income inequality in the average SSA country (especially in Mozambique and Zambia)—with important exceptions such as Burkina Faso.

Income inequality in EMDEs has fallen since the global financial crisis, continuing a trend that began in the late 1990s or early 2000s (World Bank 2018a, 2016d; Development Committee (2010); Grosh, Bussolo, and Frejie (2014); Narayan and Sánchez-Páramo (2012); Tingson et al. (2010); and World Bank (2009).

> 7 Some non-LIC countries in this list (Bangladesh, India, Nigeria) were LICs until recently. India became a lower-middle income country in 2009, Nigeria in 2008, and Bangladesh in 2014.