Share of the population living in extreme poverty
Current trends
Getting to zero
Using the World Bank definition of $1.90/day, as of 2021, roughly 710 million people remained in extreme poverty (or roughly 1 in 10 people worldwide). Nearly half of them live in India and China, with more than 85% living in just 20 countries. Since the mid-1990s, there has been a steady decline in both the worldwide poverty rate and the total number of extreme poor. In 1990, the percentage of the global population living in extreme poverty was 43%, but in 2011, that percentage had dropped down to 21%. This halving of the extreme poverty rate falls in line with the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG1) proposed by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who called on the international community at the turn of the century to reduce the percentage of people in extreme poverty by half by 2015.This reduction in extreme poverty took place most notably in China, Indonesia, India, Pakistan and Vietnam. These five countries accounted for the alleviation of 715 million people out of extreme poverty between 1990 and 2010 – more than the global net total of roughly 700 million. This statistical oddity can be explained by the fact that the number of people living in extreme poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa rose from 290 million to 414 million over the same period. However, there have been many positive signs for extensive, global poverty reduction as well.
Additionally, in countries with high levels of inequality (a common problem in countries with inadequate governing institutions), much higher growth rates are needed to reduce the rate of poverty when compared with other nations. Additionally, if China and India are removed from the equation, up to 70% of the worlds poor live in fragile states by some definitions of fragility. Some analysts project that extreme poverty will be increasingly concentrated in fragile, low-income states like Haiti, Yemen and the Central African Republic. However, some academics, such as Andy Sumner, say that extreme poverty will be increasingly concentrated in middle-income countries, creating a paradox where the worlds poor do not actually live in the poorest countries.To help low-income earners, fragile states make the transition towards peace and prosperity, the New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States, endorsed by roughly forty countries and multilateral institutions, was created in 2011. This represents an important step towards redressing the problem of fragility as it was originally articulated by self-identified fragile states who called on the international community to not only "do things differently", but to also "do different things".Civil conflict also remains a prime cause for the perpetuation of poverty throughout the developing world. Armed conflict can have severe effects on economic growth for many reasons such as the destruction of assets, destruction of livelihoods, creation of unwanted mass migration, and diversion of public resources towards war. Significantly, a country that experienced major violence during 1981–2005 had extreme poverty rates 21 percentage points higher than a country with no violence.