Further fall in extreme poverty forecast for 2015. Extreme poverty in the world is expected to fall again in 2015 to 702 million individuals (9.6% of the world population) compared with 902 million in 2012 (12.8%), according to the latest report from the World Bank. In 1990, 37.1% of the world population (i.e. almost two billion people) were still living in extreme poverty (in other words surviving on less than USD1.90 a day). The World Bank says that the fight against poverty that has been led for 25 years is bringing the international community closer to its historical target of eliminating extreme poverty by 2030. The president of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, says this marked and continuous fall in proverty is due to sustained growth in developing countries over recent years and investment in education, healthcare and social protection safety nets. He points out, however, that the slowdown in world growth and the concentration of poor people in fragile and war-ridden countries not to mention the scale and depth of the poverty that remains, the aim of eliminating extreme poverty by 2030 is highly ambitious. Over the past few decades, three regions have accounted for most of the global poor, with a rate of nearly 95%, namely East Asia/Pacific, South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. There has, however, been a considerably shift in the composition of poverty. In 1990, East Asia had half the world's poor, compared with 15% in Sub-Saharan Africa, but the situation is virtually the reverse in 2015, with over half the world's poor being found now in sub-Saharan Africa, compared with around 12% in East Asia. The World Bank expects poverty to decline in 2015 (on the 2012 level) as follows: from 7.2% to 4.1% in East Asia and the Pacific; from 6.2% to 5.6% in Latin America and the Caribbean; from 18.8% to 13.5% in South Asia; and from 42.6% to 35.2% in sub-Saharan Africa. (Original version in French by Isabelle Lamberty)