Some good news, finally.
Some thought-provoking new research argues that, absent catastrophe, and despite continuing population growth, we will never see a billion people in poverty worldwide:
World poverty is falling. This column presents new estimates of the world’s income distribution and suggests that world poverty is disappearing faster than previously thought. From 1970 to 2006, poverty fell by 86% in South Asia, 73% in Latin America, 39% in the Middle East, and 20% in Africa. Barring a catastrophe, there will never be more than a billion people in poverty in the future history of the world. [Emphasis mine]
via The End of Poverty.