Officials of international finance are solidly behind the new goal of the World Bank to put an end to extreme global poverty by the year 2030. The leaders emphasized that the focus of the World Bank should be making sure that the world’s most impoverished populations will reap the benefits from strong growth and improving affluence in the developing nations of the world.

“For the first time in history we have committed to setting a target to end poverty,” World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said on Saturday. He made his statement after a meeting of the World Bank’s Development Committee. “We are no longer dreaming of a world free of poverty; we have set an expiration date for extreme poverty,” he added.

The World Bank set the goal to reduce extreme poverty down to only 3 percent throughout the world. This will be accomplished by targeting the most impoverished 40 percent of people now living in each country of the developing world. Currently the economies of developing countries are growing at an annual rate of 6 percent on average. Millions of people are being removed from the ranks of the extreme poor and an expanding middle class is also creating growth of economic inequality.

“We recognize that sustained economic growth needs a reduction in inequality. Investments that create opportunities for all citizens and promote gender equality are an important end in their own right, as well we being integral to creating prosperity,” the Development Committee said.

Statistics reveal that global poverty has been reduced substantially over the past 25 years. In 1990 the percentage of people living in extreme poverty throughout the world was 43 percent. In 2010 that number was down to only 21 percent, and continues to decline. Most of the world’s poorest people live in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. China has been able to successfully cut extreme poverty over the last several decades.