Poverty continues to fall in Cambodia, although the pace has declined significantly. The poverty rate was 17.7 percent in 2012, with almost 3 million poor people and over 8.1 million who are near-poor. About 90 percent of them live in the countryside. World Bank estimates suggest that Cambodia achieved the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving poverty in 2009. However, the vast majority of families who escaped poverty were only able to do so by a small margin, thus the significant share of the near-poor.