Tier I indicators show the long-term development outcomes that countries are achieving and provide the context and direction for the Bank’s work. These high-level outcomes, such as those monitored as part of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), cannot be attributed directly to the Bank, since countries and their development partners all contribute to these achievements over the long term through a combination of multi-sector interventions, actions, and policy decisions. These indicators are also affected by external factors such as global crises.

The latest data on poverty shows that for the first time, in every region of the developing world, the share in the number of people living on less than $1.25 a day declined between 2005 and 2008. An estimated 1.29 billion people in 2008 lived below $1.25 a day, equivalent to 22.7% of the population of the developing world. Despite recent crises, global poverty overall kept falling. A preliminary survey-based estimate for 2010— based on a smaller sample than the global update—indicates that the global poverty rate at $1.25 a day fell to less than half of its 1990 value by 2010. If these results are confirmed by follow-up studies, the first target of theMDG1—cutting the extreme poverty rate to half of its 1990 level— would have been already achieved on the global level before the 2015 target year, despite the 2008 food, fuel, and financial crises. The recent World Bank projections also suggest that the global extreme poverty rate is expected to fall below 16 percent by 2015.

Important gains were made in several other areas. Average annual GDP per capita in developing countries reached $2,080 (constant 2000 US$) in2011. The MDG7 target on sustainable access to safe drinking water was also met in 2010, as the proportion of people without access to improved drinking water sources declined by more than half, falling from 28 percent in 1990 to 13.6 percent in 2010. Improved transport and communications infrastructure have increased connectivity: about 51 percent of all roads were paved during 2005–09, and there were 73 mobile cellular phone subscriptions for every 100 people in developing countries in 2010. Combined with reductions in the number of days it takes to set up a business (which fell to an average of 36 days in 2011 from 50 in 2007), these improvements have helped reduce costs and logistic barriers to international and regional trade.

However, these global trends mask significant variations between—and within—countries. The poorest population groups remain vulnerable, and only limited progress has been made in employment, governance, and biodiversity, as well as other priority areas. Maternal mortality remained high at 230 per 100,000 live births in 2010, and child mortality was still at 63 per 1,000 in 2010, both results falling significantly short of their MDG targets. Similarly, access to improved sanitation had reached only 56.4 percent of the population by 2010. The food, fuel and financial crises over the past four years had at times sharp negative impacts on vulnerable populations and slowed the rate of poverty reduction in some countries.

Tier I has been further strengthened by introducing three new indicators: domestic credit to the private sector as a percentage of GDP, an index measuring country statistical capacity to monitor progress related to the 2011 Busan building blocks, and an indicator on women’s economic empowerment and equality through measuring the gap between formal bank accounts held by men and women. The indicator on CO2 emissions measured in metric tons per capita was replaced by kilograms per 2005 US$ of GDP to cover the economic side of CO2 emissions.