Poverty Reduction Notwithstanding the kindness of strangers, growth is the only means to alleviate poverty for the billions struggling to sustain life. Growth in many impoverished countries has reduced the number of peo- ple living in abject poverty. Some 1.94 billion people, or 43 percent of the world population, lived below the extreme poverty line of $ 1.25 a day in 1981. Today, as freer markets fuel growth, it has dropped to 19 percent of the world-about 1.3 billion people Without growth. , human ity loses the war against poverty. Billions, presuming they survive, suffer physically and psychologically