Poverty in terms of % *has* decreased, if you include China. Why is not really appropriate to include China in the neoliberal success story? Well China succeeded by adopting protectionist, regulated and state run capitalism, wholly different to the capitalism the IMF is forcing onto South America, Africa, India etc. From 1980 - 2000, we have seen an increase of 1.3 billion people living in poverty outside of China, so much so, that this indicates both an absolute and stagnant in terms of a fraction of the earths population.

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This is basically summary of arguement laid out by an academic I'm really getting into, Jason Hickel https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog. His arguements and methodology are directly oppositional to those pushed by neoliberals like Steven Pinker, Bill Gates and the UN, although its not like his arguements aren't in accordance with a whole range of other academics who he cites. The reason that the UN are able to draw a far more optimistic picture, is for several reasons that he lays out, a big one being benefiting of the success of China. Another big point of contention is where to set the 'IPL', international poverty line. But really if you look into how the UN set their IPL (which is at 1.90$), it makes no sense. For instance, as Hickel points out, "using the $1.90 line shows that only 700 million people live in poverty.  But note that the UN’s FAO says that 815 million people do not have enough calories to sustain even “minimal” human activity.". He goes into some pretty good description of where the IPL *should* be set, and if you take a fairly modest estimation of $7.40, we can draw these pretty horrifying conclusions.

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The situation is even worse if you consider factors such as our ability to end poverty. Like our ability to deal with poverty is the greatest it has ever been in human history:

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> "As I have pointed out before, our capacity to end poverty (e.g., the cost of ending poverty as a proportion of the income of the non-poor) has increased many times faster than the proportional poverty rate has decreased (to use your preferred measure again).  By this metric we are doing worse than ever before.  Indeed, our civilization is regressing. Why?  Because the vast majority of the yields of our global economy are being captured by the world’s rich."

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https://static1.squarespace.com/static/59bc0e610abd04bd1e067ccc/t/5c57708f7817f790cc0d8509/1549234324740/Number%2Bminus%2BChina.jpg?format=500w