Poverty

The World Bank Group has the twin goals of ending extreme poverty and promoting shared prosperity. This mission underpins its analysis, financing and mobilization activities in more than 145 client countries. For almost 25 years, extreme poverty, which is the subject of the first of the Sustainable Development Goals, has been on the decline.

But today, for the first time in a generation, the fight against poverty has regressed.

For the first time in more than 20 years, the global rate of extreme poverty increased in 2020, under the effect of the aggravating consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on poverty reduction, already hampered by the conflict and climate change. About 100 million additional people (a) are now living in poverty due to the pandemic.

In 2018, four out of five people below the international poverty line lived in rural areas.

Today, the combination of COVID-19, conflict and climate change threatens to push large numbers of people in precarious situations back into extreme poverty.

Compared to chronically poor people, these “new poor” are likely to be more likely to:

As much as around 80% could be concentrated in middle-income countries, with India and Nigeria hard hit.

According to new estimates, climate change will push 68 to 132 million people into poverty by 2030. It poses a particularly serious threat to countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, both regions concentrating most of the world's poor. In a number of countries, such as Nepal, Cameroon, Liberia and the Central African Republic, a large proportion of the poor live in areas that are both conflict-affected and highly prone to flooding.

Triggering a global economic catastrophe whose shock waves continue to spread, the COVID-19 pandemic poses the latest and most immediate threat to poverty reduction today. Without a global response commensurate with the challenges, the combined effects of the pandemic and its economic consequences, armed conflicts and climate change will generate heavy human and economic costs for a long time.

Our latest research indicates that most countries will feel the effects of this crisis very likely until 2030. Under these conditions, the objective of reducing the rate of extreme poverty in the world by 2030, which was already compromised before the health crisis, will now be inaccessible in the absence of rapid, significant and solid measures.

Historical precedents show the importance of swift and collective action to overcome this crisis.

Last updated: Oct 14, 2021