I can think of a couple things that might have contributed. In the second half of the 1960s Chinese government policy switched from encouraging maximally large families to encouraging family planning and control of population growth. In 1970 the 2-child policy was implemented. Since lots of Chinese babies born in that period would have been in extreme poverty it seems likely that played a part. Interestingly 1970 also roughly marks the end of the Great Compression and beginning of the Great Stagnation in the US and many other developed economies. The obvious explanation is that this was the inflection point for a new phase of globalization and labor arbitrage, resulting in stagnant incomes for 1st world workers and higher earnings for 3rd worlders.
What happened in 1970 that poverty started sharply declining?
Seems to be mostly Asia getting richer. Hans Rosling gives a very impressive talk with amazing visuals about that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w You can also play with the data for yourself http://www.gapminder.org/world
I can think of a couple things that might have contributed. In the second half of the 1960s Chinese government policy switched from encouraging maximally large families to encouraging family planning and control of population growth. In 1970 the 2-child policy was implemented. Since lots of Chinese babies born in that period would have been in extreme poverty it seems likely that played a part. Interestingly 1970 also roughly marks the end of the Great Compression and beginning of the Great Stagnation in the US and many other developed economies. The obvious explanation is that this was the inflection point for a new phase of globalization and labor arbitrage, resulting in stagnant incomes for 1st world workers and higher earnings for 3rd worlders.