South and Southeast Asia’s LDCs: Geopolitics and Authoritarianism

South, East and Southeast Asia are generally seen as more successful sub-regions than Africa in achieving sustained growth and poverty reduction. The World Bank data reveal that while in 1990 about 14% of the world’s extreme poor lived in Sub-Saharan Africa, by 2019, the Sub-Saharan Africa’s share of global extreme poverty increased to 59%. In 2019, the estimated proportion of the continent’s population living in extreme poverty was 35% in Sub-Saharan Africa (Kofi, S., Tetteh, B., Dean, J., Christoph, L., & Daniel, M. (2023). Where in the world do the poor live? It depends on how poverty is defined. World Bank Blog, 2 August, https://datatopics.worldbank.org/world-development-indicators/stories/where-do-the-poor-live.html (accessed 9/11/2023).). During the same period, South Asia’s share of global extreme poverty declined from 28 to 24%; and that of East Asia and the Pacific dropped dramatically from 53 to 4%. The estimated proportions of population living in extreme poverty in 2019 were 1% in East Asia and the Pacific and 9% in South Asia (Kofi, S., Tetteh, B., Dean, J., Christoph, L., & Daniel, M. (2023). Where in the world do the poor live? It depends on how poverty is defined. World Bank Blog, 2 August, https://datatopics.worldbank.org/world-development-indicators/stories/where-do-the-poor-live.html (accessed 9/11/2023).).