ABSTRACT
As of 2014 Southeast Asia is home to 620 million people, or 8.6 percent of world population. Its six large economies (Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam) and five smaller ones (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Brunei, and East Timor) together account for onetenth of the income generated in all low-and middle-income economies worldwide. Less than two generations ago the vast majority of Southeast Asians were very poor. Since the 1980s, however, the region as a whole has achieved and sustained a remarkable rate of growth (Figure 1.1), in the course of which tens of millions of its citizens have successfully escaped severe poverty. This growth experience sets the region as a whole apart from other developing areas (only China can claim a consistently higher growth rate of per capita gross domestic product [GDP]) and has seen incomes in most Southeast Asian countries lifted well above the developing country average (Figure 1.2).
