Since the Asian Financial Crisis in the late 1990s and through the Global Financial Crisis of the last decade, commendable progress has been made by the member states of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in improving economic and human development outcomes both within each country and across countries. Since 1997, the economies of the poorest countries in the ASEAN—Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar and Viet Nam—have generally grown faster than the richer economies, which has reduced gaps in per capita incomes. Overall, child mortality rates have been cut by two-thirds across the ASEAN. And significant reductions have occurred even in some of the poorer member countries such as Cambodia and Lao PDR. Net primary school enrolment rates have risen in most countries, but particularly in the poorest ones, meaning that the gap between the countries with the lowest and highest rates has been reduced from 26 percentage points in 1998 to about eight percentage points in 2012. Finally, more than seven in ten Cambodians and Laotians now have access to clean water, compared to less than four in ten in 1998. The gap in living standards across the ASEAN community is being bridged, albeit gradually.