Much more work needs to be done to end poverty and close the gap in living standards between those in the bottom 40 percent and the top 60 percent of the population around the world, says the Global Monitoring Report 2014/2015, released today by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The report details, for the first time, the World Bank Group’s twin goals of ending extreme poverty by 2030 and promoting shared prosperity, measured as income growth of the bottom 40 percent. GMR 2014/2015 continues to monitor progress on the Millennium Development Goals, which inspired the WBG twin goals.

"The world has made great progress in the last quarter-century in reducing extreme poverty – it was cut by a stunning two-thirds – and now we have the opportunity to end poverty in less than a generation,” said World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim. “But we will not finish the job unless we find ways to reduce inequality, which stubbornly persists all over the world. This vision of a more equal world means we must find ways to spread wealth to the billions who have almost nothing.”

The report notes that much success has been achieved in reducing extreme poverty – those living on less than a $1.25 a day. However, the number of poor remains unacceptably high, at just over 1 billion people (14 percent of the world population) in 2011, compared with 1.2 billion (19 percent of the world population) in 2008.

Forecasts in the report show that poverty will remain stubbornly high in the South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa regions, where an estimated 377 million of the world’s 412 million poor will likely reside in 2030. In 2011, the two regions were home to 814 million of the world’s 1 billion poor.