poverty in world essay

Global poverty in an unequal world: Who is considered poor in a rich country? And what does this mean for our understanding of global poverty?

What does global poverty look like if we rely on the notions of poverty in countries like denmark, the us, or germany and how should this perspective inform our aspirations for the future of global poverty.

Abstract: The extremely low poverty line that the UN relies on has the advantage that it draws the attention to the very poorest people in the world. It has the disadvantage that it ignores what is happening to the incomes of the 90% of the world population who live above the extreme poverty threshold.

The global poverty line that the UN relies on is based on the national poverty lines in the world’s poorest countries. In this article I ask what global poverty looks like if we rely on the notions of poverty that are common in the world’s rich countries – like Denmark, the US, or Germany. Based on the evidence I ask what our aspirations for the future of global poverty reduction might be.

Note: Since the publication of this article, the World Bank has updated its poverty data. See the note at the end for more information.

In every country of the world there are people living in poverty. Even in the world’s richest countries the poorest people often live in poor housing and struggle to afford basic goods and services like heating, transport, and healthy food for themselves and their family.

Those who are in monetary poverty also have much poorer living conditions more broadly. Even in a rich and relatively equal country like Denmark middle-aged men who are among the poorest 20% of the population die on average 9 years earlier than those among the richest 20%. 1 In Denmark a person who lives on less than $30 per day is considered poor, and it is the declared goal of the country to reduce poverty relative to this threshold. 2

Countries that are much poorer than Denmark also have the goal to reduce poverty. The United Nations declared the objective of ending ‘extreme poverty’ to be the number 1 goal of the global Sustainable Development Goals . According to the UN a person is considered to live in extreme poverty when he or she is living on less than $1.90 per day, this is called the International Poverty Line . According to the latest global statistics almost one in ten people live in extreme poverty globally.

If we know that poverty is a large problem even in high income countries like Denmark where the poverty line is set at around $30 a day, why should we use an International Poverty Line that is so extremely low to measure poverty globally?

It is the reality of our extremely unequal world – in which every tenth person lives in extreme poverty – that makes such an extremely low poverty line necessary. Without having an extremely low poverty line we would not be aware of the fact that a large share of the world lives in such extreme poverty. The UN’s global poverty line is valuable because it draws attention to the reality of extreme poverty in our world.

In a world where the majority still lives on very low incomes it would be wrong if the UN decided to measure global poverty solely by a poverty line as high as the poverty line of Denmark. It would mean that the global statistics gloss over the extremely large and important income differences among the poorest billions in the world. It would mean that the difference between those who live on only $1 per day and those who have an income that is more than 20-times higher would be entirely disregarded. They would all be considered poor, and the reality that some of them are much poorer than others would be hidden.

Slightly higher global poverty lines – such as the poverty line of $3.10 per day that Kate Raworth relies on in her ‘Doughnut’ framework, or the poverty line of $7.40 per day that anthropologist Jason Hickel uses in his work, or Bob Allen’s absolute poverty line based on minimal nutritional requirements – all have the same value. 3  These low poverty lines allow us to understand the material living conditions of the poorest people in the world and have been successful in drawing attention to the terrible depths of poverty experienced by a large share of the world's population. The only way to achieve these goals is to rely on extremely low poverty lines.

Indeed, there is an argument for using an even lower poverty line. To understand what is happening to the very poorest in the world, we need to look even lower than $1.90. This is because one of the biggest failures of development is that over the last decades the incomes of the very poorest people have not risen. A big part of the reason for why this issue doesn’t get discussed enough is that the International Poverty Line we rely on is too high to see this fact.

Why not both?

Yet, only measuring global poverty relative to such extremely low poverty lines has its own large downside.

By focusing on an income threshold that is lower than the incomes of 90% of the global population we are ignoring what is happening to the majority of the world’s population. This matters. The majority of the world do not live in extreme poverty anymore , but billions are nevertheless living in great poverty still.

The obvious solution to the problem that the majority of the world is not considered by the International Poverty Line is to use an additional poverty line. This is not a new idea. One poverty researcher who has made the argument for an additional higher global poverty line based on the notions of poverty in rich countries is Lant Pritchett – you find it in his short, yet widely-cited essay ‘The case for a high global poverty line’ from eight years ago. 4

Defining global poverty lines

The definition of poverty differs between countries. Poorer countries set much lower poverty lines than richer countries. 5 This means that if we were to simply rely on national poverty definitions for a global measure of poverty we would end up with a measurement framework in which where a person happens to live would determine whether they are poor or not: If we would count as poor those who are defined nationally as poor we would end up counting a person who lives on $20 per day as poor in a rich country, while at the same time counting a person who lives on $2 as not-poor when they happen to live in a very poor country.

One way out of this problem is to set global poverty lines based on the national definitions, but to apply them globally. This is how the UN decided to define the International Poverty Line. In order to ground this global poverty line on something more than the views of global poverty researchers, it is based on the existing definitions of poverty adopted in countries around the world at the national level, but to avoid the problem outlined above they apply the national poverty lines globally. As we explain here in some detail, the $1.90 per day poverty line is set to reflect the national poverty lines adopted in the world’s poorest countries. 6 Applying this poverty line globally means that a person who lives on less than $1.90 per day is considered extremely poor no matter where they live.

In recent years the World Bank has applied this same methodology to countries in the middle-income bracket, those countries with a GNI per capita between $1000 and $12,500. Based on the poverty lines in these countries they have set additional global poverty lines at $3.20 and $5.50 per day, which are now directly available via the World Bank statistics. 7

What I want to do here is to see what a global poverty line would be if we rely on the notion of poverty in rich countries — countries like Denmark, the US, or Germany. 8 That is what Pritchett suggested eight years ago: “Since the origin of the [International Poverty Line] was just to adopt as a global lower bound the poverty lines used by the poorest countries, it symmetrically makes sense to say that the global upper bound poverty line is based on the poverty line used in rich countries.”

The definition of poverty is certainly not an easy ethical question and thoughtful people disagree about it in ways that have meaningful consequences for our understanding of the world. There are also interesting proposals for hybrid poverty lines that combine absolute and weakly-relative measures; see Ravallion (2019) for a recent proposal. 9 And I would also recommend Tony Atkinson’s last book ‘ Measuring Poverty around the World ’ for an excellent recent overview of the topic.

→ To understand how it is possible to compare poverty levels and living standards across countries you need to know the basics of global poverty measurement. You find a summary of the basics in the following fold-out box.

The basics of global poverty measurement

Throughout this article – and in global income and expenditure data generally – the statisticians who produce these figures are careful to make these numbers as comparable as possible.

First, many poorer people rely on subsistence farming and do not have a monetary income. To take this into account and make a fair comparison of their living standards, the statisticians that produce these figures estimate the monetary value of their home production and add it to their income/expenditure.

Second, price changes over time (inflation) and price differences across countries are both taken into account: all measures are adjusted for differences in purchasing power. 10 To this end incomes and expenditures are expressed in so-called international dollars . This is a hypothetical currency that results from the price adjustments across time and place. An international dollar is defined as having the same purchasing power as one US-$ in the US . This means no matter where in the world a person is living on int.-$30, they can buy the goods and services that cost $30 in the US. None of these adjustments are ever going to be perfect, but in a world where price differences are large it is important to attempt to account for these differences as well as possible, and this is what these adjustments do. 11

Throughout this text I’m always adjusting incomes for price changes over time and price differences between countries in this way. All dollar values discussed here are presented in int.-$; the UN does the same for the $1.90 poverty line. Sometimes I leave out ‘international’ as it is awkward to repeat it all the time; but every time I mention any $ amount in this text I’m referring to international-$ and not US-$. 12

An additional higher poverty line of $30 per day

Pritchett made his proposal based on data and prices a decade ago and so it is necessary to update his calculations. But I want to go beyond Pritchett’s approach and additionally provide a number of other relevant comparisons to inform our understanding of who is considered poor in a rich country.

By following this idea I find that a poverty of 30 international-$ per day corresponds to the notion of poverty in a rich country. In the following section I consider a long number of benchmarks that made me arrive at this poverty line. Here is the short summary of these comparisons:

• European countries: The span of poverty lines in high-income countries in Europe ranges from int.-$25 to int.-$38 per day .
• The US: A comparison with the poverty line in the US is not straightforward, as explained in some detail below; two different approaches arrive at poverty lines of int.-$23 and int.-$35 per day respectively.
• Survey result: A study surveyed people in a high-income country to ask at what income a person is considered poor. The study found that the mean income threshold suggested by the surveyed population corresponds to an income of int.-$37.58 per day
• UBI: The daily income paid as ‘Universal Basic Income’ in a pilot study in Germany corresponds to an income of int.-$48.19 per day .
• Social care: The average basic social care payout in Germany (‘Hartz-IV’) corresponds to int.-$30.78 per day

The range of possible higher poverty lines based on richer countries is wide, as the list of benchmarks suggests. At the lower end I believe that it might be as low as $25 per day, and on the higher end it might be as high as $40 or $50 per day.

Just as someone who lives on less than $1.90 per day is defined as extremely poor, a person who lives on less than $30 a day could be considered moderately poor.

A reality check for any poverty line you might want to consider is to ask yourself what you think about living on less than that poverty line yourself. I lived on less than $30 per day before and would consider myself poor if I’d fall back on that income level again.

In the following box you find the sources and calculations of the benchmarks that led me to my $30 per poverty line proposal.

Who is considered poor in rich countries? Poverty lines and other relevant benchmarks

Poverty lines in european countries.

As mentioned before most European countries set their poverty line at 60% of the median income in the country. In his original proposal Pritchett was relying on this 60% of median cut-off.

Calculating the poverty line for European countries therefore means that we look up their median income and then multiply it by 0.6. This is less straightforward than it might first appear. The reason for that is that there are many different income concepts. You quickly realize that it is not easy to define a person’s income if you ask yourself what your own income is. Do you take government transfers into account or not? Do you take your partner’s income into account and divide it by two? How do you take into account that you have a child for which you need to pay? It is possible to take these and many other aspects into account and arrive at useful statistics, but various sensible ways of addressing such questions lead to many different income metrics. As such, in comparing different poverty thresholds across countries we have to take care to avoid mixing different income concepts as much as possible.

One important difference is how incomes are adjusted for the size of the household: whether the total household income is simply divided by the number of people (including children) – ‘per capita’ income – or whether some adjustment is made to account for the fact that larger households, and particularly households with children, face lower costs per person – known as ‘equivalised’ income. Whereas EU countries, like other rich countries, use equivalised income to measure poverty, the UN’s measurement of global poverty is based on a global dataset of per capita incomes. This dataset is called PovcalNet , and it is this that we must use in order to make comparisons of poverty measures in different countries according to the same income concept.

In this dataset we find the median income for countries around the world and we can take that median income and then apply the logic on which the European poverty lines are based. In the extensive footnote here you find more details and the full calculations. 13

As high-income European countries I’m referring to those European countries, which according to the Eurostat statistics had a higher income in 2019 than the European average. These are the following countries: Finland, Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Germany, France, Iceland, Switzerland, Norway, Luxembourg, Denmark, Austria, Ireland, and the UK.

These are the poverty lines for daily income in a number of high-income European countries (based on 60% of the median incomes from PovcalNet):

• Sweden: $29.40 per da
• Norway: $37.80 per day
• Austria: $31 per day
• UK: $25.04 per day
• Switzerland: $35.82 per day
• Germany: $28.35 per day
• France: $27.28 per day
• Luxembourg: $43.86 per day
• Finland: $27.22 per day
• Iceland: $31.64 per day
• Ireland: $24.68 per day
• Netherlands: $28.6 per day
• Belgium: $26.92 per day
• Denmark: $29.06 per day

The span of poverty lines in these countries ranges from $25 (for the UK and Ireland) up to $38 (for Norway); in the small country of Luxembourg the poverty line is higher.

The poverty line in the US

Unlike European countries, the US does not set the poverty line in a relative way. Instead the US poverty line dates back to the work of Mollie Orshansky, an economist working for the Social Security Administration in the early 1960s. Since then it has been of course revised for price changes, but otherwise it remained unchanged.

The US poverty line is very often criticised as being too low. Those that criticize the US poverty line in that way therefore suggest that the severity of poverty in the US is understated in the statistics.

How high is the poverty line in the US? In 2020 the poverty threshold for a single person under 65 was $30, measured in 2011 international-$ per day to be comparable with the other figures in this article. 14

Now the problem with comparing this poverty line with the global statistics is again that the income concept is different. The US crucially relies on an equivalence scale for adjusting the income cutoff depending on the household size.

One alternative is to use the World Bank's poverty and inequality data – which expresses incomes in per capita terms – to find a 'harmonized' poverty line: the line that yields the same poverty rate in the World Bank data as the official poverty rate. 15

The official poverty rate in the US in 2019 was  10.5% ,  as reported  by the U.S. Census Bureau. The poverty line that yields this rate in the World Bank's data is $22.53 (measured in 2011 international-$). 16

An alternative is to apply the same concept that the Europeans are using for their poverty line determination. If the US would use the 60% of median income definition of poverty their poverty line would be int.-$32.8 per day 17 Very close to the one-person poverty line based on Orshansky’s work.

A somewhat comparable poverty line based on these three approaches therefore falls into the range of around $23 to $35 per day. Within the range of poverty lines in European countries.

Survey results – Below which income do you consider a person poor?

The UN and Pritchett rely on the existing poverty lines in low-income and high-income countries respectively to derive their poverty lines. We can follow other approaches too.

An obvious one is to ask what people out there believe: Who is considered poor in a high-income country by people in high-income countries?

For the regular poverty report of the German government, a survey is conducted that asks Germans below which income level they consider someone as poor. The latest data is from the year 2015. 18

The mean answer given by the German population for a cutoff below which a person is considered poor was 947€ per month. In international dollars per day this corresponds to an income of int.-$37.58 . 19

Universal Basic Income

Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a political idea that is becoming rapidly more popular.

A large UBI study in Germany – called ‘Mein Grundeinkommen’ – sets this income at €1200. In international-$ this corresponds to an income of int.-$48.19 per day . 20

Social security in Germany

Germany pays basic social care for its citizens. This social security payment is referred to as ‘Hartz-IV’.

How much a person receives depends on the particular circumstances of the individual, but we can look at the average payment. In 2018 a single person received on average 783 Euro per month. That corresponds to int.-$30.78 per day . 21

The Roslings’ suggest a cutoff of $32 per day

Anna Rosling-Rönnlund, Ola Rosling and Hans Rosling challenged the old dichotomy between developed and developing countries in their bestselling book ‘ Factfulness ’. They argue that the old dichotomy corresponds to a view of the world that was accurate half a century ago when a few countries were relatively well-off, but most countries were living in very poor conditions .Today, they say, people around the world live on a large spectrum. To reflect this spectrum they proposed 4 income levels.

The first cut-off corresponds to the international poverty line (rounded to int.-$2 per day). The next income cutoff they set at $8 per day, the following one at $16 and the highest one at int.-$32 per day .

Kahneman's and Deaton's study of income and emotional well-being

Nobel laureates Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton published a famous study on the link between life satisfaction and income. 22

The authors find that higher incomes go together with higher self-reported life satisfaction, but for people’s self-reported emotional well-being this is only true up to a certain point: the study finds that above $75,000 further increases in income do not correspond with improvements in people’s emotional well-being – a finding that is often cited to argue that additional economic growth does not improve people’s lives in high-income countries. 23

Again, the income concept is not the same as that in PovcalNet, and so comparisons with the global data are not directly possible. But we can ask what the daily income at which emotional well-being supposedly levels off corresponds to: $75,000 per year are int.-$205 per day .

It is certainly worth considering whether an income up to which emotional well-being increases could be taken as the basis for a definition of poverty. A US company reacted to the research finding of Kahneman and Deaton by using it to set the minimum wage in their company: everyone in that company gets paid that salary.

For the discussion of global poverty however it might be considered as an even higher poverty line, but for any practical purpose in the world today the income cutoff would be too high as only a very small fraction of the world lives on more than $75,000 per year.

How many people in the world live in poverty?

We have seen that 10% of the world live in extreme poverty as defined by the UN. How large is the share of the world that lives in moderate poverty?

The latest global data tells us that 85% of the world population live on less than $30 per day . These are 6.5 billion people.

Relying on a higher poverty line of $45 per day you find that 92% live in poverty, and using a lower poverty line of $20 per day you find that 78% live in poverty. No matter which of these poverty lines you might want to choose, at least three-quarters of the world live in poverty.

All of this data refers to pre-pandemic times. The global recession has certainly increased the share below any of these cutoff points. As soon as the new data is available you will find it on Our World in Data.

The chart shows where in the world people are poor. If we would only rely on the UN’s extreme poverty line we would conclude that barely anyone lives in poverty in high-income countries. Relying on higher poverty lines, this data here shows that even in high-income countries there is a significant share of the population that lives in poverty. No country, not even the high-income countries, has eliminated poverty. There are no ‘developed countries’ — there is work to do for all.

But just as clear from this data is the fact that in many world regions the large majority of people are very poor. In Sub-Saharan Africa about 40% of the population lives on less than $1.90 per day as the chart shows. In all regions outside of high-income countries more than 85% of all people live in moderate poverty.

Countries in which the majority do not live in poverty have only left poverty behind in recent history

Two centuries ago the global income distribution was very different. Back then almost everyone in the world was living in extreme poverty. Those places in which few people live in moderate poverty today only left poverty behind in the very recent past.

Denmark is one of those places. The reason why the majority of people in Denmark is not living in poverty is that the economic inequality is low and the average income high.

The fact that the inequality is low you can see on the map. It shows an inequality measure called the Gini coefficient (explained here ) which makes clear that Denmark is among the least unequal countries in the world.

The reason that the average income in Denmark is high is due to the fact that average incomes have increased steadily for the last two centuries; this long-term development is called economic growth. As the historical data shows the average incomes in Denmark are today more than 20-times higher than in the past.

You can add any other country to this chart. By adding one of those countries in which the majority lives in poverty – like Ethiopia – you see just how large the differences in average incomes are.

GDP per capita is by far the most widely used measure of average income and is yet another income concept from the two I mentioned so far. 24 It is a more comprehensive measure of incomes and crucially takes into account government expenditures. For these and other reasons (mentioned in the long footnote) you will find that dividing GDP per capita by 365 days will let you arrive at a higher value than the income that is determined in household income surveys. 25

Billions of people live in countries where average incomes are very low

The income of every person depends on two factors, the average income in the country they live in and the position that particular person has in that country’s income distribution. This chart here shows the average income in countries around the world. The height of each bar represents the average daily income in a country, the width of each country corresponds to the country’s population size. I have ordered the countries by income: from the poorest country on the very left (South Sudan where the average person lives on $1.12 per day) to the richest country on the very right (Luxembourg with an average of $86 per day).

After two centuries of economic growth the average income in Denmark is now $57 per day today. You find the country far to the right in this chart, which tells you that only very few countries in the world have such high average incomes. The fact that the average income is far higher than the poverty line tells us that the existing poverty in Denmark discussed at the beginning of this post is to a large extent the consequence of inequality.

What this chart makes very clear is how low the average incomes in many countries in the world are. The huge majority of the world live in countries where the average income is much lower than the poverty threshold in rich countries. 82% of the world population live in countries where the mean income is less than $20 per day.

And where incomes are low, living standards generally are poor . As the last chart below shows, a child that is born into a poorer country must not just expect to live on a very low income, but also faces a much higher risk of not staying alive at all.

As I have said before , people are not poor because of who they are, but because of where they are. This is why economic growth is so important to leave poverty behind. By far the most important difference between those people who are not living in poverty and those who do is the average income in the country that they live in – this single factor matters more for a person’s income than all other factors taken together . The increase of average income in a country is called economic growth and for global poverty to decrease substantially economic growth for the poorest billions of people is necessary.

→ See my previous article: The economies that are home to the poorest billions of people need to grow if we want global poverty to decline .

The future of global poverty

The world today is far from the ‘end of poverty’ relative to any poverty definition. After two centuries of unprecedented progress against the very worst poverty it is still the case that every tenth person lives on less than $1.90 per day .

As the world has not even ended extreme poverty it is therefore right to focus much of our attention on this very low poverty cutoff; ending extreme poverty surely is a global goal of great importance.

Yet at the same time we should consider what our aspirations for the future are. In the past our ancestors did not know that it was possible for a society to leave widespread poverty behind. Today we are in a different situation. We know from the reality of today’s rich countries that widespread poverty is not inevitable. Because we know that poverty relative to such higher cutoffs is not inevitable I believe it would be wrong to limit our ambitions to eradicating poverty based on the definition of poverty in the very poorest countries.

What I take away from this discussion are three insights: First, we have seen from countries like Denmark that it is possible to reduce poverty for an entire population relative to a poverty line of about $30 per day. Second, we have seen that these countries were extremely poor in the past and were able to reduce poverty over the course of the last few generations. And third we have seen that the huge majority of the world is still living in great poverty, by any standard. What this suggests to me is that the history of global poverty reduction has only just begun.

Continue reading Our World in Data : My colleague Hannah Ritchie has just published a series of posts on the drivers of deforestation and how to bring humanity's long history of deforestation to an end. You find her work here .

Note: The World Bank has updated its poverty and inequality data

The data in this article uses a previous release of the World Bank's poverty and inequality data in which incomes are expressed in 2011 international-$.

The World Bank has since updated its methods, and now measures incomes in 2017 international-$. As part of this change, the International Poverty Line used to measure extreme poverty has also been updated: from $1.90 (in 2011 prices) to $2.15 (in 2017 prices).

This has had little effect on our overall understanding of poverty and inequality around the world. But because of the change of units, many of the figures mentioned in this article will differ from the latest World Bank figures.

Read more about the World Bank's updated methodology:

• From $1.90 to $2.15 a day: the updated International Poverty Line
• Explore the latest World Bank data on poverty and inequality

Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Joe Hasell for his thoughtful comments on draft versions of this article.

Brønnum-Hansen H, Foverskov E, Andersen I. Income inequality in life expectancy and disability-free life expectancy in Denmark. J Epidemiol Community Health 2021;75:145-150. https://jech.bmj.com/content/75/2/145

For the moment it is important to note that this $30 per day poverty line is defined in international-$ and therefore comparable with the ‘International Poverty Line’ discussed in the following section. Much more details about how to compare incomes across countries, the income concept here, and the definition of this poverty line follows further below in this text.

Kate Raworth (2017) – A Doughnut for the Anthropocene: humanity's compass in the 21st century. In The Lancet Planetary Health. Volume 1, Issue 2, E48-E49, May 01, 2017. Open Access DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(17)30028-1 You find the metrics that the Doughnut relies on in the Appendix here .

Jason Hickel – Could you live on $1.90 a day? That's the international poverty line and here .

Allen, Robert C.(201). – Absolute Poverty: When Necessity Displaces Desire . American Economic Review, 107 (12): 3690-3721.DOI: 10.1257/aer.20161080

Lant Pritchett (2013) – Monitoring progress on poverty: the case for a high global poverty line. Online here https://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/odi-assets/publications-opinion-files/8440.pdf

Jolliffe and Prydz (2016)

Specifically, the line is set at the average national poverty line amongst 15 particular low-income countries. As Jolliffe and Prydz (2016) demonstrate however, this is also the average poverty line found among the poorest quarter of countries with available data, and also among countries falling into the World Bank’s low-income category.

The study on which these thresholds rely is Jolliffe, D., Prydz, E.B. Estimating international poverty lines from comparable national thresholds. J Econ Inequal 14, 185–198 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10888-016-9327-5 The researchers also report an average high-income country poverty line of $21.70 per day.

High income countries in the World Bank framework are however relatively poor compared to the countries that I’m focusing on here – the cutoff for a high-income country according to the World Bank is $12,536, about a quarter of the GNI of Germany and only a fifth of the US. Accordingly, the poverty cutoff is much lower than in those countries. Here you find the World Bank income classification cutoffs .

The range of incomes considered ‘middle’ and ‘high’ income countries according to the World Bank are very low relative to rich countries. High-income economies are those with a GNI per capita of $12,536 or more. The range of middle-income economies begins at a GNI per capita of $1,036. In this post I want to rely on countries like Denmark; higher income countries by any standard.

Martin Ravallion (2019) – On Measuring Global Poverty . NBER Working Paper 26211. DOI 10.3386/w26211

This is possible by relying on the work of the International Comparison Project , which monitors the prices of goods and services around the world.

Angus Deaton and Alan Heston (2010) discuss the methods behind such price adjustments and many of the difficulties and limitations involved.

Deaton, A., and Heston, A. 2010. “Understanding PPPs and PPP-Based National Accounts.” American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 2 (4): 1–35. A working paper version is available online here .

Keep in mind that in the special case of the US the US-$ equals the international-$.

The European reference incomes are national median equivalised disposable income after social transfers.

The disposable household income including all income from work (employee wages and self-employment earnings), private income from investment and property, transfers between households, and all social transfers received in cash including old-age pensions.

Eurostat applies an equivalisation factor calculated according to the OECD-modified scale first proposed in 1994. The UN/World Bank is not.

This is according to Eurostat here , where you also find the relevant data. (If the link should break, search on Google for ‘Distribution of income by quantiles - EU-SILC and ECHP surveys’.)

There are various ways of bringing the national poverty lines with reference to the national median equivalised disposable income after social transfers in line with the income/expenditure concept used in PovcalNet.

Joliffe and Prydz follow a different approach and their paper is very relevant for anyone interested in this question here. One alternative to the approach I’m following in this article would be to start from the poverty lines they estimated (based on the poverty headcount ratio) and apply the growth rate of the median income since the publication of their study. Yet another possibility would of course be to repeat their analysis with the up-to-date data. I am not following either of these approaches because I believe for a wide audience they are less transparent that the approach here – which is simply: I rely on the same dataset so that I rely on the same income concept, then look up the median income and multiply it by 0.6.

This is the reference: Jolliffe & Prydz (2016). Estimating international poverty lines from comparable national thresholds. The Journal of Economic Inequality, 14(2), 185-198.

The following are the relevant calculations. All of them are based on PovcalNet data:

Germany’s median monthly income in 2017 was $1417.29 according to PovcalNet.

60% of the median expressed in daily income/consumption is 0.6*$1417.29=$850.374/30=$28.35 per day

Sweden’s median monthly income in 2017 was $1469 according to PovcalNet.

60% of the median expressed in daily income/consumption is (0.6*1469)/30=$29.38 per day

Norway’s median monthly income in 2017 was $1890 according to PovcalNet.

60% of the median expressed in daily income/consumption is (0.6*1890)/30=$37.8 per day

Austria’s median monthly income in 2017 was $1534 according to PovcalNet.

60% of the median expressed in daily income/consumption is (0.6*1534)/30=$30.68 per day

In the UK the median monthly income in 2017 was $1252 according to PovcalNet.

60% of the median expressed in daily income/consumption is (0.6*1252)/30=$25.04 per day

France’s median monthly income in 2017 was $1364 according to PovcalNet.

60% of the median expressed in daily income/consumption is (0.6*1364)/30=$27.28 per day

Switzerland’s median monthly income in 2017 was $1791 according to PovcalNet.

60% of the median expressed in daily income/consumption is (0.6*1791)/30=$35.82 per day

Spain’s median monthly income in 2017 was $982 according to PovcalNet.

60% of the median expressed in daily income/consumption is (0.6*982)/30=$19.64 per day

Iceland’s median monthly income in 2017 was $1582 according to PovcalNet.

60% of the median expressed in daily income/consumption is (0.6*1582)/30=$31.64 per day

Luxembourg’s median monthly income in 2017 was $2193 according to PovcalNet.

60% of the median expressed in daily income/consumption is (0.6*2193)/30=$43.86 per day

Netherland’s median monthly income in 2017 was $1430 according to PovcalNet.

60% of the median expressed in daily income/consumption is (0.6*1430)/30=$28.6 per day

Belgium’s median monthly income in 2017 was $1346 according to PovcalNet.

60% of the median expressed in daily income/consumption is (0.6*1346)/30=$26.92 per day

Denmark’s median monthly income in 2017 was $1453 according to PovcalNet.

60% of the median expressed in daily income/consumption is (0.6*1453)/30=$29.06 per day

Ireland’s median monthly income in 2017 was $1234 according to PovcalNet.

60% of the median expressed in daily income/consumption is (0.6*1234)/30=$24.68 per day

Finland’s median monthly income in 2017 was $1361 according to PovcalNet.

60% of the median expressed in daily income/consumption is (0.6*1361)/30=$27.22 per day

According to the " Annual Update of the HHS Poverty Guidelines " the poverty line in the US is an annual income of US$12,760. That is in 2020 price. According to the World Bank , the Consumer Price Index in the US in 2020 was 118.7 and in 2011 it was 103.2. So prices between the years rose by 118.7/103.2 - 1 =  15% .

Deflating the poverty line in to 2011 prices we get 12,760/1.15 = $11,096. And expressing that as a per day figure that is $11,096/365 = $30.40

This method was introduced by Jolliffe and Prydz (2016) and used by Jolliffe et al. (2022) as an ingredient of their method for setting the World Bank's international poverty lines.

Jolliffe, Dean, and Espen Beer Prydz. 2016. Estimating International Poverty Lines from Comparable National Thresholds . Washington, DC.

Jolliffe, Dean Mitchell, Daniel Gerszon Mahler, Christoph Lakner, Aziz Atamanov, and Samuel Kofi Tetteh Baah. 2022. Assessing the Impact of the 2017 PPPs on the International Poverty Line and Global Poverty. The World Bank. Available to read at the  World Bank here .

You can see our detailed calculations in this Google Colabs document .

The US median monthly income in 2017 was $1640 according to PovcalNet.

60% of the median expressed in daily income/consumption is (0.6*1640)/30=$32.8 per day

These reports are called ‘Armuts- und Reichtumsbericht der Bundesregierung’ online at armuts-und-reichtumsbericht.de

The latest survey was produced by aproxima and published in 2016. It is published as Wahrnehmung von Armut und Reichtum in Deutschland, Ergebnisse der repräsentativen Bevölkerungsbefragung „ARB-Survey 2015“ , Berlin: Bundesministerium für Arbeit und Soziales (Hrsg.).

The 2011 PPP conversion factor for private consumption (LCU per international $) for Germany in 2015 is 0.84 according to the World Bank here .

This means the perceived poverty threshold corresponds to €947/0.84=int.-$1,127.38 per month or int.-$37.58.

The 2011 PPP conversion factor for private consumption (LCU per international $) for Germany in 2017 is 0.83 according to the World Bank here .

This means the UBI corresponds to 1200/0.83=int.-$1,445.78 per month or int.-$48.19.

That’s €783/0.834=int.-$938.85 per month. Or int.-$938.85/30.5=int.- $30.78 per day.

Kahneman and Deaton (2010) – High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. https://www.pnas.org/content/107/38/16489

Kahneman and Deaton analyze two different concepts self-reported satisfaction:

– Emotional well-being refers to the “emotional quality of an individual's everyday experience – the frequency and intensity of experiences of joy, stress, sadness, anger, and affection that make one's life pleasant or unpleasant.”

– Life evaluation refers to the thoughts that people have about their life when they think about it.

The authors find that higher incomes go together with higher self-reported life satisfaction in both metrics. What they emphasize is that at very high incomes this is not true anymore – emotional well-being does not increase over around $75,000. Evaluation of life however continues to increase even at incomes over $75,000.

The two previous ones were income/expenditure as determined in household surveys and equivalized disposable income after social transfers.

There is generally a gap between GDP per capita and the averages found in both income surveys and expenditure surveys. But the reasons for the gap are different depending on which we are comparing.

GDP includes many items that are typically not measured in household income surveys, such as an imputed rental value of owner-occupied housing, the retained earnings of firms and taxes on production such as VAT. The gap is even larger when GDP is compared to surveys of household consumption – the latter concept excluding both investment expenditure and government expenditure on public services such as education and health.

Other aggregates beyond GDP are available in the national accounts that are more comparable to the concepts applied in household income and consumption surveys. However, important differences still remain even here. For example, in addition to imputed rents, imputations for the value of certain financial services, such as bank accounts, are included in aggregate household consumption measured in national accounts, with no equivalent for these items recorded in the survey data. In many countries the consumption of ‘nonprofit institutions serving households’ (NPISH) is included as part of household consumption within national accounts, but not within household surveys.

On top of these conceptual differences are a range of mismeasurement problems that affect both sets of data. On this topic see Deaton (2005), and Pinkovskiy and Sala-i-Martin (2016).

Deaton, Angus. 2005. “Measuring Poverty in a Growing World (or Measuring Growth in a Poor World).” The Review of Economics and Statistics 87 (1): 1–1.

Pinkovskiy, Maxim, and Xavier Sala-i-Martin. 2016. “Lights, Camera… Income! Illuminating the Nation"

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Ending Poverty

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an increase in the number of people living in extreme poverty, for the first time in a generation. Progress in important areas, such as childhood vaccination and income equality between countries has been reversed, which has not happened in the past three decades. If the current trend continues, it is projected that by 2030, a shocking 575 million people will still be living in extreme poverty, and 84 million children will not be able to attend school. It is estimated that it will take almost 300 years to eliminate discriminatory laws, end child marriage and close gender gaps in legal protection. In 2020, with 71 million more people living in extreme poverty than the year before, the COVID-19 crisis caused the biggest setback in global poverty reduction in decades.

In 2020, with 71 million more people living in extreme poverty than the year before, the COVID-19 crisis caused the biggest setback in global poverty reduction in decades. In April 2020, the United Nations issued a framework for the immediate socio-economic response to COVID-19  and created the Secretary-General's UN COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund .

From 1990 to 2014, the world made remarkable progress in reducing extreme poverty, with over one billion people moving out of that condition. The global poverty rate decreased by an average of 1.1 percentage points each year, from 37.8 percent to 11.2 percent in 2014. However, between 2014 and 2019, the pace of poverty reduction slowed to 0.6 percentage points per year, which is the slowest rate seen in the past three decades. Within the 24-year period, most of the poverty reduction was observed in East Asia and the Pacific, as well as South Asia.

What is Poverty?

Poverty entails more than the lack of income and productive resources to ensure sustainable livelihoods. Its manifestations include hunger and malnutrition, limited access to education and other basic services, social discrimination and exclusion, as well as the lack of participation in decision-making. In 2015, more than 736 million people lived below the international poverty line. Around 10 per cent of the world population (pre-pandemic) was living in extreme poverty and struggling to fulfil the most basic needs like health, education, and access to water and sanitation, to name a few. There were 122 women aged 25 to 34 living in poverty for every 100 men of the same age group, and more than 160 million children were at risk of continuing to live in extreme poverty by 2030.

Poverty facts and figures

• According to the most recent estimates, in 2023 almost 700 million people around the world were subsisting on less than $2.15.
• The share of the world’s workers living in extreme poverty fell by half over the last decade: from 14.3 per cent in 2010 to 7.1 per cent in 2019. However, in 2020 it rose for the first time in two decades after the COVID-19 pandemic.
• It is projected that the global goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030 will not be achieved , with almost 600 million people still living in extreme poverty.
• One out of six children lives in extreme poverty . Between 2013 and 2022, the number of children living on less than US$2.15 a day decreased from 383 million to 333 million, but the economic impact of COVID-19 led to three lost years of progress. 
• In 2021, 53 per cent of the world’s population – 4.1 billion people – did not benefit from any form of social protection .

Poverty and the Sustainable Development Goals

Ending poverty in all its forms is the first of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the  2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development .

The SDGs’ main reference to combatting poverty is made in  target 1.A : “Ensure significant mobilization of resources from a variety of sources, including through enhanced development cooperation, in order to provide adequate and predictable means for developing countries, in particular least developed countries, to implement programmes and policies to end poverty in all its dimensions.”

The SDGs also aim to create sound policy frameworks at national and regional levels, based on pro-poor and gender-sensitive development strategies to ensure that by 2030 all men and women have equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to basic services, ownership and control over land and other forms of property, inheritance, natural resources, appropriate new technology and financial services, including microfinance.

Measuring Poverty

There has been marked progress in reducing poverty over the past decades. In 2015, 10 per cent of the world’s population lived at or below $1.90 a day -down from 16 per cent in 2010 and 36 per cent in 1990- while in 2023 almost 700 million people around the world were subsisting on less than $2.15.

At current rates of progress, the world will likely not meet the global goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030 , with estimates indicating that nearly 600 million people will still be struggling with extreme poverty then.

Extreme poverty is concentrated in places where it will be hardest to eradicate— among the least developed countries, in conflict-affected areas, and in remote, rural areas. The outlook is also grim for the nearly 50 percent of the world’s population who live on less than $6.85 a day – the measure used for upper-middle-income countries.

Global Action

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development promises to leave no one behind and to reach those furthest behind first. Meeting this ambitious development agenda requires visionary policies for sustainable, inclusive, sustained and equitable economic growth, supported by full employment and decent work for all, social integration, declining inequality, rising productivity and a favorable environment. In the 2030 Agenda, Goal 1 recognizes that ending poverty in all its forms everywhere is the greatest global challenge facing the world today and an indispensable requirement for sustainable development.

While progress in eradicating extreme poverty has been incremental and widespread, the persistence of poverty, including extreme poverty remains a major concern in Africa, the least developed countries, small island developing States, in some middle-income countries, and countries in situations of conflict and post-conflict countries. In light of these concerns, the General Assembly, at its seventy-second session, decided to proclaim the Third United Nations Decade for the Eradication of Poverty  (2018–2027). The objective of the Third Decade is to maintain the momentum generated by the implementation of the  Second United Nations Decade for the Eradication of Poverty  (2008-2017) towards poverty eradication. Further, the 3rd Decade is also expected to support, in an efficient and coordinated manner, the internationally agreed development goals related to poverty eradication, including the Sustainable Development Goals.

Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA)

In 1995, the  World Summit for Social Development  held in Copenhagen, identified three core issues: poverty eradication, employment generation and social integration, in contributing to the creation of an international community that enables the building of secure, just, free and harmonious societies offering opportunities and higher standards of living for all.

Within the  United Nations system , the  Division for Social Policy and Development (DSPD)  of the  Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA)  acts as Focal Point for the United Nations Decade for the Eradication of Poverty and undertakes activities that assist and facilitate governments in more effective implementation of the commitments and policies adopted in the Copenhagen Declaration on Social Development and the further initiatives on Social Development adopted at the 24th Special session of the General Assembly.

A potential game-changer in accelerating SDG progress

At the 2023 SDG Summit held at the UN’s headquarters in New York, the General Assembly adopted a political declaration to accelerate action to achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). The document aims to drive economic prosperity and well-being for all people while protecting the environment. In addition, it includes a commitment to financing for developing countries and supports the proposal of an SDG Stimulus of at least $500 billion annually, as well as an effective debt-relief mechanism.

• International Day for the Eradication of Poverty

Through  resolution 47/196  adopted on 22 December 1992, the General Assembly declared 17 October as the  International Day for the Eradication of Poverty .

The observance of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty can be traced back to 17 October 1987. On that day, over a hundred thousand people gathered at the Trocadéro in Paris, where the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was signed in 1948, to honour the victims of extreme poverty, violence and hunger. They proclaimed that poverty is a violation of human rights and affirmed the need to come together to ensure that these rights are respected. These convictions are inscribed on a commemorative stone unveiled that day. Since then, people of all backgrounds, beliefs and social origins have gathered every year on October 17th to renew their commitment and show their solidarity with the poor.

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Ending Global Poverty: Why Money Isn’t Enough

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5 Essays About Poverty Everyone Should Know

Poverty is one of the driving forces of inequality in the world. Between 1990-2015, much progress was made. The number of people living on less than $1.90 went from 36% to 10%. However, according to the World Bank , the COVID-19 pandemic represents a serious problem that disproportionately impacts the poor. Research released in February of 2020 shows that by 2030, up to ⅔ of the “global extreme poor” will be living in conflict-affected and fragile economies. Poverty will remain a major human rights issue for decades to come. Here are five essays about the issue that everyone should know:

“We need an economic bill of rights” –  Martin Luther King Jr.

The Guardian published an abridged version of this essay in 2018, which was originally released in Look magazine just after Dr. King was killed. In this piece, Dr. King explains why an economic bill of rights is necessary. He points out that while mass unemployment within the black community is a “social problem,” it’s a “depression” in the white community. An economic bill of rights would give a job to everyone who wants one and who can work. It would also give an income to those who can’t work. Dr. King affirms his commitment to non-violence. He’s fully aware that tensions are high. He quotes a spiritual, writing “timing is winding up.” Even while the nation progresses, poverty is getting worse.

This essay was reprinted and abridged in The Guardian in an arrangement with The Heirs to the Estate of Martin Luther King. Jr. The most visible representative of the Civil Rights Movement beginning in 1955, Dr. King was assassinated in 1968. His essays and speeches remain timely.

“How Poverty Can Follow Children Into Adulthood” – Priyanka Boghani

This article is from 2017, but it’s more relevant than ever because it was written when 2012 was the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. That’s no longer the case. In 2012, around ¼ American children were in poverty. Five years later, children were still more likely than adults to be poor. This is especially true for children of colour. Consequences of poverty include anxiety, hunger, and homelessness. This essay also looks at the long-term consequences that come from growing up in poverty. A child can develop health problems that affect them in adulthood. Poverty can also harm a child’s brain development. Being aware of how poverty affects children and follows them into adulthood is essential as the world deals with the economic fallout from the pandemic.

Priyanka Boghani is a journalist at PBS Frontline. She focuses on U.S. foreign policy, humanitarian crises, and conflicts in the Middle East. She also assists in managing Frontline’s social accounts.

“5 Reasons COVID-19 Will Impact the Fight to End Extreme Poverty” – Leah Rodriguez

For decades, the UN has attempted to end extreme poverty. In the face of the novel coronavirus outbreak, new challenges threaten the fight against poverty. In this essay, Dr. Natalie Linos, a Harvard social epidemiologist, urges the world to have a “social conversation” about how the disease impacts poverty and inequality. If nothing is done, it’s unlikely that the UN will meet its Global Goals by 2030. Poverty and COVID-19 intersect in five key ways. For one, low-income people are more vulnerable to disease. They also don’t have equal access to healthcare or job stability. This piece provides a clear, concise summary of why this outbreak is especially concerning for the global poor.

Leah Rodriguez’s writing at Global Citizen focuses on women, girls, water, and sanitation. She’s also worked as a web producer and homepage editor for New York Magazine’s The Cut.

“Climate apartheid”: World’s poor to suffer most from disasters” – Al Jazeera and news Agencies

The consequences of climate change are well-known to experts like Philip Alston, the special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. In 2019, he submitted a report to the UN Human Rights Council sounding the alarm on how climate change will devastate the poor. While the wealthy will be able to pay their way out of devastation, the poor will not. This will end up creating a “climate apartheid.” Alston states that if climate change isn’t addressed, it will undo the last five decades of progress in poverty education, as well as global health and development .

“Nickel and Dimed: On (not) getting by in America” – Barbara Ehrenreich

In this excerpt from her book Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich describes her experience choosing to live undercover as an “unskilled worker” in the US. She wanted to investigate the impact the 1996 welfare reform act had on the working poor. Released in 2001, the events take place between the spring of 1998 and the summer of 2000. Ehrenreich decided to live in a town close to her “real life” and finds a place to live and a job. She has her eyes opened to the challenges and “special costs” of being poor. In 2019, The Guardian ranked the book 13th on their list of 100 best books of the 21st century.

Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of 21 books and an activist. She’s worked as an award-winning columnist and essayist.

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About the author, emmaline soken-huberty.

Emmaline Soken-Huberty is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon. She started to become interested in human rights while attending college, eventually getting a concentration in human rights and humanitarianism. LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights, and climate change are of special concern to her. In her spare time, she can be found reading or enjoying Oregon’s natural beauty with her husband and dog.

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The Top 9 Causes of Global Poverty

More than 10% of the world’s population lives in extreme poverty — but do you know why? We look at 9 of the top drivers of global poverty.

Picture it: you need to feed your family, travel to and from work, and get your child school supplies. But you only have $1.90 in your pocket. It seems like an impossible scenario. But for approximately  800 million people  in the world, it’s their reality. 11% of the world’s population is living in  extreme poverty , which is defined as surviving on only $1.90  a day .

As dire as those figures are, there is some good news: In 1990, 35% of the world (1.8 billion people) was living in extreme poverty — so we’ve made some huge strides. While many argue that we will never be able to truly get rid of poverty,  extreme  poverty can be eradicated. Unfortunately, there is no “magic bullet” solution, but if we want to get rid of extreme poverty, we must first understand its causes. Here, we look at some of the top causes of poverty around the world.

1. INADEQUATE ACCESS TO CLEAN WATER AND NUTRITIOUS FOOD

Currently, more than  2 billion people  don’t have access to clean water at home, while over  800 million  suffer from hunger. You might think that poverty causes hunger and prevents people from accessing clean water (and you would be right!), but hunger and water insecurity are also big reasons why people struggle to escape extreme poverty.

If a person doesn’t get enough food, they simply don’t have the strength and energy needed to work. Lack of access to food and clean water can also lead to preventable illnesses like diarrhea. And when people must travel far distances to clinics or spend what little money remains on medicine, it drains already vulnerable populations of money and assets, and can knock a family from poverty into extreme poverty.

Even if clean water sources are available, they’re often located far from poor, rural communities. This means that women and girls collectively spend some  200 million hours  every day walking long distances to fetch water. That’s precious time that could be used working or getting an education to help secure a job later in life.

2. LITTLE OR NO ACCESS TO LIVELIHOODS OR JOBS

This might seem a bit like a “no brainer.” Without a job or a way to make money, people will face poverty. But it’s easy to assume that if someone wants a job, they could have one. That just isn’t true, particularly in developing and rural parts of the world. Dwindling access to productive land (often due to conflict, overpopulation, or climate change), and overexploitation of resources like fish or minerals is putting increasing pressure on many traditional livelihoods. In the  Democratic Republic of Congo  (DRC) for example, most of the population lives in rural communities where natural resources have been plundered over centuries of colonialism — while conflict over land disputes has forced people from the land they relied upon for food and money. Now, more than half of the country lives in extreme poverty. While inconsistent work and low paying jobs can land a family in poverty, absolutely no work means that a family can’t get by without assistance.

3. CONFLICT

Conflict can cause poverty in several ways. Large scale, protracted violence that we see in places like Syria can grind society to a halt, destroy infrastructure, and cause people to flee, forcing families to sell or leave behind all their assets. In Syria, around  70% of the entire population  now lives below the poverty line — this in a country where extreme poverty was once very rare. Women often  bear the brunt of conflict : during periods of violence, female-headed households become very common. And because women often have difficulty getting well-paying work and are typically excluded from community decision-making, their families are particularly vulnerable.

But even small bouts of violence can have huge impacts on communities that are already struggling. For example, if farmers are worried about their crops being stolen, they won’t invest in planting. Women are particularly vulnerable in these kinds of conflicts, too, as they often become the targets of sexual violence while fetching water or working alone in the fields.

4. INEQUALITY

There are many different types of inequality in the world, from economic to social inequalities like gender, caste systems, or tribal affiliations. But no matter the inequality, it generally means the same thing: unequal or no access to the resources needed to keep or lift a family out of poverty.

Sometimes inequalities are obvious, but in other situations, it can be subtle — for example, the voices of certain people or groups might not be heard in community meetings, meaning they don’t get a say in important decisions. Regardless, these inequalities mean that the people affected don’t have the tools they desperately need to get ahead, and for already vulnerable families, this can mean the difference between being poor or living in extreme poverty.

5. POOR EDUCATION

Not every person without an education is living in extreme poverty. But most of the extremely poor don’t have an education. And why is that? There’s a lot of  barriers  stopping children from going to school. Many families can’t afford to send their children to school and need them to work. More still don’t see a benefit in  educating girls . Education is often referred to as the great equalizer, and that’s because education can open the door to jobs and other resources and skills that a family needs to not just survive but thrive. UNESCO estimates that  171 million people  could be lifted out of extreme poverty if they left school with basic reading skills. And, with even more education, world poverty could be cut  in half .

6. CLIMATE CHANGE

You might be stunned to learn that the World Bank estimates that  climate change  has the power to push more than  100 million people  into poverty over the next ten years. As it is, climate events like drought, flooding, and severe storms disproportionately impact communities already living in poverty. Why? Because many of the world’s poorest populations rely on farming or hunting and gathering to eat and earn a living. They often have only just enough food and assets to last through the next season, and not enough reserves to fall back on in the event of a poor harvest. So when natural disasters (including the widespread droughts caused by  El Niño ) leave millions of people without food, it pushes them further into poverty, and can make recovery even more difficult.

7. LACK OF INFRASTRUCTURE

Imagine that you have to go to work, or to the store, but there are no roads to get you there. Or heavy rains have flooded your route and made it impassable. What would you do then? A lack of infrastructure — from roads, bridges, and wells to cables for light, cell phones, and internet — can isolate communities living in rural areas. Living “ off the grid ” means the inability to go to school, work, or market to buy and sell goods. Traveling farther distances to access basic services not only takes time, it costs money, keeping families in poverty. Isolation limits opportunity, and without opportunity, many find it difficult, if not impossible, to escape extreme poverty.

8. LIMITED CAPACITY OF THE GOVERNMENT

Many people living in the United States are familiar with social welfare programs that people can access if they need healthcare or food assistance. But not every government can provide this type of help to its citizens — and without that safety net, there’s nothing to stop vulnerable families from backsliding further into extreme poverty if something goes wrong. Ineffective governments also contribute to several of the other causes of extreme poverty mentioned above, as they are unable to provide necessary infrastructure or ensure the safety and security of their citizens in the event of conflict.

9. LACK OF RESERVES

People living in poverty don’t have the means to weather the storms of life. So when there is a drought, or conflict, or illness, there is little money saved or assets on hand to help. In Ethiopia for example, repeated cycles of drought have caused harvest after harvest to fail, causing a widespread hunger crisis. To cope, families will pull their children from school, and sell off everything they own to eat. That can help a family make it through one bad season, but not another. For communities constantly facing climate extremes or prolonged conflict, the repeated shocks can send a family reeling into extreme poverty and prevent them from ever recovering.

This blog was originally published at www.concernusa.org

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The top 11 causes of poverty around the world

Feb 3, 2022

Approximately 10% of the world’s population lives in extreme poverty. But why? Updated for 2022, we look at 11 of the top causes of poverty around the world.

For most of us, living on less than $2 a day seems far removed from reality. But it  is  the reality for roughly 800 million people around the globe. Approximately 10% of the global population lives in extreme poverty, meaning that they're living below the poverty line of $1.90 per day.

There is some good news: In 1990, that figure was 1.8 billion people. We've made progress. But in the last few years we've also begun to move backwards — in 2019, estimates were closer to 600 million people living in extreme poverty. Climate change and conflict have both hindered progress. The global economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic only made matters worse.

There’s no one single solution to poverty . There isn't a single cause of poverty, either. In fact, most cases of poverty in 2022 are the result of a combination of factors. Understanding what these factors are and how they work together is a critical step to sustainably ending poverty.

Learn more about the causes of poverty — and how we're solving them

1. inequality.

Let's start with something both simple and complex: Inequality is easy enough to understand as a concept. When one group has fewer rights and resources based on an aspect of their identity compared to others in a community, that's inequality. This marginalization could be based on caste, ability, age, health, social status or — most common and most pervasive — gender.

How inequality functions as a cause of poverty, however, is a bit more multifaceted. When people are given fewer rights or assets based on their ethnicity or tribal affiliation, that means they have fewer opportunities to move ahead in life. We see this often in gender inequality , especially when women have fewer rights around their health and economic power. In this case, equality isn't even relative. It doesn't matter that someone has more.  What matters is that someone else doesn't have enough.

This is especially harmful when inequality is combined with risk — which is the basic formula we use at Concern to understand the cycle of poverty . A widow raising a family of five won't have the same resources available to her husband. If she lives in an area vulnerable to the effects of climate change, that puts pressure on what few  resources she has. In some countries, this is the rule rather than the exception.

To address inequality, we must consider all groups in a community. What's more, to build equality we have to consider equality of results, as opposed to equality of resources.

2. Conflict

If poverty is caused by inequality multiplied by risk, let's talk about risks. At the top of the list of risks for poverty is conflict . Large-scale, protracted crises, such as the decade of civil war in Syria , can grind an otherwise thriving economy to a halt. As fighting continues in Syria, for example, millions have fled their homes (often with nothing but the clothes on their backs). Public infrastructure has been destroyed. Prior to 2011, as few as 10% of Syrians lived below the poverty line. Ten years later, more than 80% of Syrians now live below the poverty line.

But the nature of conflict has changed in the last few decades, and violence has become more localized. This also has a huge impact on communities, especially those that were already struggling. In some ways, it's even harder to cope as these crises go ignored in headlines and primetime news. Fighting can stretch out for years, if not decades, and leave families in a permanent state of alert. This makes it hard to plan for the long-term around family businesses, farms, or education.

3. Hunger, malnutrition, and stunting

You might think that poverty causes hunger (and you would be right!). But hunger is also a cause — and maintainer — of poverty . If a person doesn’t get enough food, they’ll lack the strength and energy needed to work. Or their immune system will weaken from malnutrition and leave them more susceptible to illness that prevents them from getting to work.

In Ethiopia, stunting contributes to GDP losses as high as 16%.

This can lead to a vicious cycle, especially for children. From womb to world, the first 1,000 days of a child’s life are key to ensuring their future health. For children born into low-income families, health is also a key asset to their breaking the cycle of poverty. However, if a mother is malnourished during pregnancy, that can be passed on to her children. The costs of malnutrition may be felt over a lifetime: Adults who were stunted as children earn, on average, 22% less than those who weren't stunted. In Ethiopia, stunting contributes to GDP losses as high as 16%.

4. Poor healthcare systems — especially for mothers and children

As we saw above with the effects of hunger, extreme poverty and poor health go hand-in-hand. In countries with weakened health systems, easily-preventable and treatable illnesses like malaria , diarrhea, and respiratory infections can be fatal. Especially for young children.

When people must travel far distances to clinics or pay for medicine, it drains already vulnerable households of money and assets. This can tip a family from poverty into extreme poverty. For women in particular, pregnancy and childbirth can be a death sentence.  Maternal health is often one of the most overlooked areas of healthcare in countries that are still built around patriarchal structures. New mothers and mothers-to-be are often barred from seeking care without their father's or husband's permission. Adolescent girls who are pregnant (especially out of wedlock) face even greater inequities and discrimination.

5. Little (or zero) access to clean water, sanitation, and hygiene

Currently, more than 2 billion people don’t have access to clean water at home. This means that people collectively spend 200 million hours every day walking long distances to fetch water. That’s precious time that could be used working, or getting an education to help secure a job later in life. And if you guessed that most of these 200 million hours are shouldered by women and girls… you're correct. Water is a women's issue as well as a cause of poverty.

Contaminated water can also lead to a host of waterborne diseases, ranging from the chronic to the life-threatening. Poor water infrastructure — such as sanitation and hygiene facilities — can compound this. It can also create other barriers to escaping poverty, such as preventing girls from going to school during their cycles.

6. Climate change

Climate change causes poverty , working as an interdependent link between not only extreme poverty but also many of the other causes on this list — including hunger , conflict, inequality, and a lack of education (see below). One report from the World Bank estimates that the climate crisis has the power to push more than 100 million people into poverty over the next decade.

Many of the world’s poorest populations rely on farming or hunting and gathering to eat and earn a living. Malawi, as an example, is 80% agrarian. They often have only just enough food and assets to last through the next season, and not enough reserves to fall back on in the event of a poor harvest. So when climate change or natural disasters (including the widespread droughts caused by El Niño ) leave millions of people without food, it pushes them further into poverty, and can make recovery even more difficult.

How climate change keeps people in poverty

By 2030, climate change could force more than 100 million people into extreme poverty.

7. Lack of education

Not every person without an education is living in extreme poverty. But most adults living in extreme poverty did not receive a quality education. And, if they have children, they're likely passing that on to them. There are many barriers to education around the world , including a lack of money for uniforms and books or a cultural bias against girls’ education .

But education is often referred to as the great equalizer. That's because it can open the door to jobs and other resources and skills that a family needs to not just survive, but thrive. UNESCO estimates that 171 million people could be lifted out of extreme poverty if they left school with basic reading skills. Poverty threatens education, but education can also help end poverty .

8. Poor public works and infrastructure

What if you have to go to work, but there are no roads to get you there? Or what if heavy rains have flooded your route and made it impossible to travel? We're used to similar roadblocks (so to speak) in the United States. But usually we can rely on our local governments to step in.

A lack of infrastructure — from roads, bridges, and wells, to cables for light, cell phones, and internet — can isolate communities living in rural areas. Living off the grid often means living without the ability to go to school, work, or the market to buy and sell goods. Traveling further distances to access basic services not only takes time, it costs money, keeping families in poverty.

As we've found in the last two years, isolation limits opportunity. Without opportunity, many find it difficult, if not impossible, to escape extreme poverty.

9. Global health crises including epidemics and pandemics

Speaking of things we've learned over the last two years… A poor healthcare system that affects individuals, or even whole communities, is one cause of poverty. But a large-scale epidemic or pandemic merits its own spot on this list. COVID-19 isn't the first time a public health crisis has fueled the cycle of poverty. More localized epidemics like Ebola in West Africa (and, later, in the DRC ), cholera in Haiti or the DRC, or malaria in Sierra Leone have demonstrated how local and national governments can grind to a halt while working to stop the spread of a disease, provide resources to frontline workers and centers, and come up with contingency plans as day-to-day life is disrupted.

All of this comes, naturally, at a cost. In Guinea, Liberia , and Sierra Leone — the three countries hit hardest by the 2014-16 West African Ebola epidemic — an estimated $2.2 billion was lost across all three countries' GDPs in 2015 as a direct result of the epidemic. This included losses in the private sector, agricultural production, and international trade.

The crisis in Kenya: Climate, COVID, and hunger

The worst drought in four decades, the worst locust invasion in seven, plus the domino effects of a global pandemic have northern Kenyans living out an underreported crisis and facing an uncertain future.

10. Lack of social support systems

In the United States, we're familiar with social welfare programs that people can access if they need healthcare or food assistance. We also pay into insurances against unemployment and fund social security through our paychecks. Theses systems ensure that we have a safety net to fall back on if we lose our job or retire.

But not every government can provide this type of help to its citizens. Without that safety net, there’s nothing to stop vulnerable families from backsliding further into extreme poverty. Especially in the face of the unexpected.

11. Lack of personal safety nets

If a family or community has reserves in place, they can weather some risk. They can fall back on savings accounts or even a low-interest loan in the case of a health scare or an unexpected layoff, even if the government doesn't have support systems to cover them. Proper food storage systems can help stretch a previous harvest if a drought or natural disaster ruins the next one.

At its core, poverty is a lack of basic assets or a lack on return from what assets a person has.

People living in extreme poverty can't rely on these safety nets, however. At its core, poverty is a lack of basic assets or a lack on return from what assets a person has. This leads to negative coping mechanisms, including pulling children out of school to work (or even marry ), and selling off assets to buy food. That can help a family make it through one bad season, but not another. For communities constantly facing climate extremes or prolonged conflict, the repeated shocks can send a family reeling into extreme poverty and prevent them from ever recovering.

Solutions to Poverty to Get Us To 2030

What would Zero Poverty look like for the world in 2030? Here are a few starting points.

How can you help?

At Concern, we believe that zero poverty is possible, especially when we work with communities to address both inequalities and risks. Last year, we reached 36.9 million people with programs designed to address the specific causes of extreme poverty in countries, communities, and families.

Pictured in the banner image for this story is one of those people, Adrenise Lusa. Born 60 years ago in the DRC's Manono Territory, Adrenise joined Concern's Graduation program in 2019 and participated in trainings on income generation and entrepreneurship, which gave her ideas on how to increase her production and income. With monthly cash transfers as part of Graduation and a loan from her community Village Savings and Loans Association, she invested in a few income-generating activities including goat rearing and trading oil, maize, and cassava. Prior to joining Graduation, she had the ideas. But, as she explains, "I didn’t start these businesses because I just didn’t have enough money."

Since launching her new ventures, Adrenise has increased her income from approximately 30,000 francs per month to anywhere between 100–400,000 francs per month, depending on the season. She's used her additional income to buy a plot of land and build a new house, feed her family with more nutritious food, and send her son and daughter to university.

You can make your own impact by supporting our efforts working with the world’s poorest communities. Learn more about the other ways you can help the fight against poverty.

More about the causes of poverty

Extreme Poverty and Hunger: A Vicious Cycle

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Poverty and Inequality in the World, Essay Example

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Words: 626

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Poverty and inequality are two matters at all times influencing one another. Undoubtedly, where there is poverty there is also inequality happening on a social level.  These two terms, applied when discussing society in its entirety, are utilized to describe how inequality on an economical level affects social statuses, making room for let us say lucky groups, the ones able to afford almost anything and the unlucky, those who can barely make it from one day to another. Thereof, these two terms describe the cause and effect of the economic system, however complex it might be.

The main actors included in this process are, actually, the people living in the society and, also, the system at work in the society, by means of which people can or cannot get advantage insofar as to make their lives better. The actors included in the inequality process are, therefore, people on the one hand and, on the other hand, the economic system active in a particular society. This is exactly why the matter could not be discussed generally, but applied to each country in part.

The main focus of each scholar is that of identifying the most efficient strategies by means of each poverty to be avoided and inequality disposed of. However, given the complexity of the problem and the variety of variables which influence it, my standpoint is that no general strategy can be found, no strategy which, if applied anywhere, could solve such a sensitive matter. More precisely, distinct solutions should be sought and applied, afterwards, in each country in part.  I do not ignore the fact that relevant insights could be derived from one country which could aid solve the problem in another country, but that is not, under no circumstance, enough. In other words, global citizenship philosophy should be understood as the point of departure for the struggle of highlighting the efficient solutions towards eliminating inequality in societies.

Thereof, the main question I wish to bring to debate is that of identifying whether it would be more relevant that a united team of researchers would study a corpus of distinct societies in order to put together a strategy which would help eliminate inequality or that the same team of researchers would study the same country and its society, irrespective of the other insights derived from distinct societies, with the same scope. This question parts from the discussions in ”Globalization. A very short introduction”, by Manferd B. Steger. This made me realize that such a scope implies a numerous of variables to be taken into consideration and, however, contextualization, especially at a time in which globalization is rapidly escalating.

Probably, the most important aspect of such a research consists of the capabilities of the specialists of identifying the exact characteristics of each society in part which would affect, in any way, the rise of inequality. The presupposition stands clear. Each society has characteristics that influence the economic process, some of which are the great historical moments it went through, the collective mentality, the political system, the social intake of the differences between people, from the ways in which one can go from one social status to another until the way in which women are being viewed in comparison to men. Thereof, the question I propose stands relevant from the point of view that the strategy which, for example, would be applicable in a society in which women are expected to be paid far less than men occupying the very same positions would not be efficient in a society in which women are already highly emancipated and are not expected to be stay-at-home mothers for a long period of time.

Steger, B. “Manfred. Globalization: A Very Short Introduction.”

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Essay on Poverty: Samples in 100, 200, 300 Words

• Updated on  
• Oct 14, 2023

Poverty is a deep-rooted problem that continues to affect a large portion of the world’s population today. It touches on several aspects of human life including but not limited to political, economic, and social elements. Even though there are several methods to escape poverty, still issues arise due to a lack of adequate unity among the country’s citizens. Here are some essays on poverty which will give you insights about this topic.

Table of Contents

• 1 Essay on Poverty in 100 words
• 2 Essay on Poverty in 200 words
• 3.1 Reasons Behind Poverty
• 3.2 World Poverty Conditions
• 3.3 Role of NGOs to Eradicate Poverty
• 3.4 What Can be Done by Us?

Essay on Poverty in 100 words

Poverty is defined as a state of scarcity, and the lack of material possessions to such an extreme extent that people have difficulties in fulfilling their basic needs. Robert McNamara, a former World Bank President, states that extreme poverty is limited by illiteracy, malnutrition, disease, high infant mortality rate, squalid conditions of living, and low life expectancy.

In order to eradicate poverty in a country, strict measures need to be taken on all levels. The political system needs to address this issue with utmost sincerity and strategic implementation in such a way that it improves the lives of people, especially the ones living below the poverty line. 

Also Read: Speech on Made in India

Essay on Poverty in 200 words

Poverty is like a parasite that degrades its host and eventually causes a lot of damage to the host. It is basically the scarcity of basic needs that leads to an extremely degraded life and even low life expectancy. It includes a lack of food, shelter, medication, education, and other basic necessities. Poverty is a more serious circumstance where people are forced to starve. It can be caused by a variety of factors depending upon the country. 

Every country that is hit with pandemic diseases, experiences an increase in poverty rates. This is because of the fact that poor people are unable to receive adequate medical care and hence are unable to maintain their health. This renders the people powerless and even puts their liberty in jeopardy. This is because of the fact that poor people can become trapped in a vicious cycle of servitude. The condition of poverty is a distressing one that causes pain, despair, and grief in the lives of the ones it affects. 

This is also a negative scenario that prevents a child from attending basic education. It’s the lack of money that prevents people from living sufficiently. Also, it is the cause of more serious social concerns such as slavery, child labour, etc. Hence action is needed on the same with utmost sincerity. 

Essay on Poverty in 300 words

Poverty is a multifaceted concept that includes several aspects such as social aspects, political elements, economic aspects, etc. It is basically associated with undermining a variety of essential human attributes such as health, education, etc. Despite the growth and development of the economies of countries, poverty still exists in almost every one of them. 

Reasons Behind Poverty

There are several contributing reasons behind poverty in a nation. Some of them are mentioned below:-

• Lack of literacy among citizens
• Lack of Capital in the country
• Large families and a rapidly growing population
• Limited employment opportunities

There are even urban areas where the slum population is increasing. These are deprived of many basic amenities such as sanitation, drainage systems, and low-cost water supply, etc. 

World Poverty Conditions

According to UNICEF , around 22000 children lose their lives each day due to poverty. There are approximately 1.9 billion children in developing countries in the world and India is also among them. Out of these, approximately 640 million don’t have a proper shelter, 270 million are living without medical facilities, and approximately 400 million don’t have access to safe water. This worldwide situation is growing at a fast pace. 

Role of NGOs to Eradicate Poverty

The approaches by NGOs basically include helping the poor by providing various public services such as medical services etc.

They also play a major role in mobilizing the services recommended by the government. They have various approaches and strategies that directly help the poor in various ways.

What Can be Done by Us?

We help in eradicating poverty by increasing employment opportunities.

Ensuring financial services and providing the same is another such measure that can be taken.

Recognizing social entrepreneurs as people of influence, conveying to them the seriousness of this situation, and then eventually making people aware of the same is another thing that can be done. 

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Writing an essay on poverty in 200 words requires you to describe various aspects of this topic such as what causes poverty, how it affects individuals and society as a whole, etc. The condition of poverty is a distressing one that causes pain, despair, and grief in the lives of the ones it affects.

An essay on poverty may be started as follows:- Poverty is a deep-rooted problem that continues to affect a large portion of the world’s population today. It touches on several aspects of human life including but not limited to political, economic, and social elements. Even though there are several methods to escape poverty, still issues arise due to a lack of adequate unity among the country’s citizens.

Poverty in 100 words: Poverty is defined as a state of scarcity, and the lack of material possessions to such an extreme extent that people have difficulties in fulfilling their basic needs. Robert McNamara, a former World Bank President, states that extreme poverty is limited by illiteracy, malnutrition, disease, high infant mortality rate, squalid conditions of living, and low life expectancy. In order to eradicate poverty in a country, strict measures need to be taken on all levels. The political system needs to address this issue with utmost sincerity and strategic implementation in such a way that it improves the lives of people, especially the ones living below the poverty line.

For more information on such interesting topics, visit our essay writing page and follow Leverage Edu .

Deepansh Gautam

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Poverty Essay for Students and Children

500+ words essay on poverty essay.

“Poverty is the worst form of violence”. – Mahatma Gandhi.

How Poverty is Measured?

For measuring poverty United nations have devised two measures of poverty – Absolute & relative poverty.  Absolute poverty is used to measure poverty in developing countries like India. Relative poverty is used to measure poverty in developed countries like the USA. In absolute poverty, a line based on the minimum level of income has been created & is called a poverty line.  If per day income of a family is below this level, then it is poor or below the poverty line. If per day income of a family is above this level, then it is non-poor or above the poverty line. In India, the new poverty line is  Rs 32 in rural areas and Rs 47 in urban areas.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Causes of Poverty

According to the Noble prize winner South African leader, Nelson Mandela – “Poverty is not natural, it is manmade”. The above statement is true as the causes of poverty are generally man-made. There are various causes of poverty but the most important is population. Rising population is putting the burden on the resources & budget of countries. Governments are finding difficult to provide food, shelter & employment to the rising population.

The other causes are- lack of education, war, natural disaster, lack of employment, lack of infrastructure, political instability, etc. For instance- lack of employment opportunities makes a person jobless & he is not able to earn enough to fulfill the basic necessities of his family & becomes poor. Lack of education compels a person for less paying jobs & it makes him poorer. Lack of infrastructure means there are no industries, banks, etc. in a country resulting in lack of employment opportunities. Natural disasters like flood, earthquake also contribute to poverty.

In some countries, especially African countries like Somalia, a long period of civil war has made poverty widespread. This is because all the resources & money is being spent in war instead of public welfare. Countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc. are prone to natural disasters like cyclone, etc. These disasters occur every year causing poverty to rise.

Ill Effects of Poverty

Poverty affects the life of a poor family. A poor person is not able to take proper food & nutrition &his capacity to work reduces. Reduced capacity to work further reduces his income, making him poorer. Children from poor family never get proper schooling & proper nutrition. They have to work to support their family & this destroys their childhood. Some of them may also involve in crimes like theft, murder, robbery, etc. A poor person remains uneducated & is forced to live under unhygienic conditions in slums. There are no proper sanitation & drinking water facility in slums & he falls ill often &  his health deteriorates. A poor person generally dies an early death. So, all social evils are related to poverty.

Government Schemes to Remove Poverty

The government of India also took several measures to eradicate poverty from India. Some of them are – creating employment opportunities , controlling population, etc. In India, about 60% of the population is still dependent on agriculture for its livelihood. Government has taken certain measures to promote agriculture in India. The government constructed certain dams & canals in our country to provide easy availability of water for irrigation. Government has also taken steps for the cheap availability of seeds & farming equipment to promote agriculture. Government is also promoting farming of cash crops like cotton, instead of food crops. In cities, the government is promoting industrialization to create more jobs. Government has also opened  ‘Ration shops’. Other measures include providing free & compulsory education for children up to 14 years of age, scholarship to deserving students from a poor background, providing subsidized houses to poor people, etc.

Poverty is a social evil, we can also contribute to control it. For example- we can simply donate old clothes to poor people, we can also sponsor the education of a poor child or we can utilize our free time by teaching poor students. Remember before wasting food, somebody is still sleeping hungry.

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Poverty in the World

How it works

To start with, as you can see the Global issue that I chose is poverty. One main cause of poverty that is found is warfare. when a war is caused the country who loses has many people who had lost their homes properties and valuable stuff. Poverty now is on a great level where people even live in garbage dunks, some don’t even have a home, people eat from garbage and others get sick by what they eat. Leading to death.

Likewise, Other people are not only in streets but also in little towns like the town where I used to live there were lots of homeless people who could not even look in the garbage for something to eat because people would not let them. Some of them were transported to another city or give them a new opportunity to start a new life, some of them went to jail and others died because of hunger.

This topic is important to me because I had experience of it, I experienced the poverty not the extreme one but I was in one poverty level I’m not sure which one but my family is in an extreme poverty, that’s why I chose this topic other than Climate change or religious conflicts. Poverty is not just being poor, poverty is in what we live in, what we drink, eat, wear, and in what ambient the person lives in. In my opinion poverty is the greatest Global Issue that is standing right now.

Later on, Oxfam is the organization who is helping to prevent poverty. Oxfam started in 1942, United Kingdom. Winnie Bynanyima has been the executive director since 2013. Oxfam is important to this issue of preventing poverty because it is one of the greatest organizations who is helping the poor. Although, Oxfam had some problems like other organization also debates and because of it they failed to report child abuse which was a big problem because they did not did what they promised.

Your donation will be used in general support of Oxfam America’s efforts around the world. Oxfam America is highly rated by Charity Navigator, the country’s leading independent charity evaluator. Oxfam America meets the 20 Standards for Charity Accountability of the BBB Wise Giving Alliance. Furthermore, today Oxfam works to end injustice of poverty, (that’s how they call it). Their plan is to end the roots of poverty and create lasting solutions. Also, the three main solutions that they have are:

• Help with extreme inequality and poverty
• Climate change

These plans or solutions are what the world is asking for not too much money or power but a bit of effort, a bit of heart, some people who looks for their partner, someone who shares what the man from above has given them and being a good Samaritan. This aint about religion but Oxfam is a good organization who actually helps prevent poverty. I think that Oxfam is doing a really good job because it doesn’t just focus on poverty but also in other stuff. Other Global Issues.

More than 3 billion people live on less than $2.50 a day and an estimated 1.3 billion people live in extreme poverty, making do with $1.25 or less daily. Can you imagine what it’s like to not have enough food to eat and go to bed hungry at night? Poverty is still a big problem in the world today, as you can see from the numbers. This is in spite of the progress that you see around you. The good news is that in 2010, only 18% of the world’s population was living way below the poverty line as compared to 36% in 1990. It’s a small victory, but the progress is slow. The World Bank aims to reduce global poverty to 9% by 2020 and to 3% by 2030. They plan to do this by focusing more on promoting income growth for the bottom 40% of the population and boosting shared prosperity. It’s a herculean task.

Having said that, I would bring awareness by starting a food drive. Social media would also work because many people now days even old people spend a lot of time in social media starting from the simplest one to the most used social media app, like starting from Facebook to Twitter or something like that. Or something like making T-shirts and with meaningful words or images that would caught people’s attention into it and try to make them think or change their mind and start to do something. Also, another way to do is simple just remind people to donate and that’s it.

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World Economic Situation and Prospects 2024

Global economic growth is projected to slow from an estimated 2.7 per cent in 2023 to 2.4 per cent in 2024, trending below the pre-pandemic growth rate of 3.0 per cent, according to the United Nations World Economic Situation and Prospects (WESP) 2024. This latest forecast comes on the heels of global economic performance exceeding expectations in 2023. However, last year’s stronger-than-expected GDP growth masked short-term risks and structural vulnerabilities. 

The UN’s flagship economic report presents a sombre economic outlook for the near term. Persistently high interest rates, further escalation of conflicts, sluggish international trade, and increasing climate disasters, pose significant challenges to global growth.

The prospects of a prolonged period of tighter credit conditions and higher borrowing costs present strong headwinds for a world economy saddled with debt, while in need of more investments to resuscitate growth, fight climate change and accelerate progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

“2024 must be the year when we break out of this quagmire. By unlocking big, bold investments we can drive sustainable development and climate action, and put the global economy on a stronger growth path for all,” said António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General. “We must build on the progress made in the past year towards an SDG Stimulus of at least $500 billion per year in affordable long-term financing for investments in sustainable development and climate action.”

Subdued growth in developed and developing economies Growth in several large, developed economies, especially the United States, is projected to decelerate in 2024 given high interest rates, slowing consumer spending and weaker labour markets. The short-term growth prospects for many developing countries – particularly in East Asia, Western Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean – are also deteriorating because of tighter financial conditions, shrinking fiscal space and sluggish external demand. Low-income and vulnerable economies are facing increasing balance-of-payments pressures and debt sustainability risks. Economic prospects for small island developing States, in particular, will be constrained by heavy debt burdens, high interest rates and increasing climate-related vulnerabilities, which threaten to undermine, and in some cases, even reverse gains made on the SDGs.

Inflation trending down but recovery in labour markets still uneven Global inflation is projected to decline further, from an estimated 5.7 per cent in 2023 to 3.9 per cent in 2024. Price pressures are, however, still elevated in many countries and any further escalation of geopolitical conflicts risks renewed increases in inflation. 

In about a quarter of all developing countries, annual inflation is projected to exceed 10 per cent in 2024, the report highlights. Since January 2021, consumer prices in developing economies have increased by a cumulative 21.1 per cent, significantly eroding the economic gains made following the COVID-19 recovery. Amid supply-side disruptions, conflicts and extreme weather events, local food price inflation remained high in many developing economies, disproportionately affecting the poorest households. 

“Persistently high inflation has further set back progress in poverty eradication, with especially severe impacts in the least developed countries,” said Li Junhua, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs. “It is absolutely imperative that we strengthen global cooperation and the multilateral trading system, reform development finance, address debt challenges and scale up climate financing to help vulnerable countries accelerate towards a path of sustainable and inclusive growth.”

According to the report, the global labour markets have seen an uneven recovery from the pandemic crisis. In developed economies, labour markets have remained resilient despite a slowdown in growth. However, in many developing countries, particularly in Western Asia and Africa, key employment indicators, including unemployment rates, are yet to return to pre-pandemic levels. The global gender employment gap remains high, and gender pay gaps not only persist but have even widened in some occupations.   

Related Sustainable Development Goals

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The State of Development Journals 2024: Quality, Acceptance Rates, Review Times, and What’s New

David mckenzie.

This is the eighth in my annual series of efforts to put together data on development economics journals that is not otherwise publicly available or easy to access (see  2017 ,  2018 ,  2019 ,  2020 , 2021 , 2022 , 2023 for the previous editions). I once again thank all the journal editors and editorial staff who graciously shared their statistics with me.

Journal Quality

The most well-known metric of journal quality is its impact factor . The standard impact factor is the mean number of citations in the last year of papers published in the journal in the past 2 years, while the 5-year is the mean number of cites in the last year of papers published in the last 5. As noted in previous years, the distribution of citations are highly skewed, and while the mean number of citations differs across journals, there is substantial overlap in the distributions – most of the variation in citations is within, rather than across journals. We continue to see growth in these impact factors at many journals. The big news this year is that they have decided that you really don’t need three decimal places any more in the impact factors.  I compliment these stats with RePec’s journal rankings which take into account article downloads and abstract views in addition to citations. 

Table 3 then shows two additional metrics, taken from Scimago , which uses information from the Scopus database. The first is the SJR (SCImago Journal Rank), which is a prestige-weighted citation metric – which works like Google PageRank, giving more weight to citations in sources with a relatively high SJR. I’ve included some of the top general journals in economics for comparison. Scimago also provides an H-index which is the number of papers published by a journal  in any year that were cited at least h times in the reference year – so this captures how many papers continue to be influential but as a result, favors more established journals, and ones that publish more articles, that have a larger body of articles to draw upon. 

How many submissions are received, and what are the chances of getting accepted?

Table 4 shows the number of submissions received each year. See previous years posts for statistics before 2019. The total submissions in the 11 journals tracked is almost 10,000 papers (note I received no data from the Review of Development Economics this year so have excluded it).  Total submissions in these journals are up 7.7% over last year, although not quite at the 2020 peak.

At most journals the number of submissions has either leveled off or fallen since a peak in 2020-21. World Development had the largest 2020 peak when they had a special call for a variety of short papers on COVID-19, but perhaps the combination of people sending off lots of papers during the pandemic and then being a little slower to start new projects has halted the rapid growth somewhat.

·       The newish World Development Perspectives already received 532 submissions last year, more than many long established development journals.

·       The Review of Development Economics has seen very rapid growth in submissions. I only started collecting stats for it last year, but the editors note that in 2015 they received about 450 submissions, and this has now grown to more than 1,500 last year.

Table 5 shows the total number of papers published in each journal. 782 papers were published in 2023, so that’s a lot of development research (even though less than 1 in 10 of the submitted papers and down slightly on the 811 papers published in 2022). I’ve noted in previous years that some of the journals have been able to flexibly increase the number of articles published as their submission numbers have risen, reducing publication lags as well. 

The ratio of the number of papers published to those submitted is approximately the acceptance rate. Of course papers are often published in a different year from when they are submitted, and so journals calculate acceptance rates by trying to match up the timing. Each journal does this in somewhat different ways. Hence Economia-Lacea reports a 0% acceptance rate for 2023 since none of the papers submitted in 2023 have yet been accepted, although some are still under review.  Table 6 shows the acceptance rates at different journals as reported by these journals. Of course the number and quality of submissions varies across journals, and so comparing acceptance rates across journals does not tell you what the chances are of your particular paper getting accepted is at these different journals.  

How long does it take papers to get refereed?

In addition to wanting to publish in a high quality outlet, and having a decent chance of publication, authors also care a lot about how efficient the process is. Table 7 provides data on the review process (see the previous years’ posts for historic data). The first column shows the desk rejection rate, which averages 73%. Column 2 uses the desk rejection rates and acceptance rates to estimate the acceptance rate conditional on you making it past the desk rejection stage. On average, about one in three papers that gets sent to referees gets accepted, with this varying from 12% to 63% across journals.

The remaining columns give some numbers on how long it takes to get a first-round decision. The statistics “Unconditional on going to referees” includes all the desk rejections, which typically don’t take that many days. The average conditional on going to referees is in the 3-5 month range. The last two columns then show that at most journals, almost all papers have a decision within 6 months – so in my opinion, you should feel free to send an enquiry if your paper takes longer than that. 

Do revisions typically get sent back to the referees or handled by the editor?

Another factor that can make a big difference in how long it takes to publish a paper is whether editors send revised papers back to referees, or instead reads the response letter and revision themselves and just makes a decision on this basis. This is something that the AER and AEJ Applied have been trying to do more and more, with only 25% of revisions at the AEJ Applied going back to referees. In my own editing at WBE, I send fewer than 5% of revisions back to referees. This year I asked the different journals what their approaches were. Many do not systematically track this, but offered some approximations:

·       Journal of Development Economics: approximately 60% of revisions go back to referees, although 0% for the short papers (see below)

·       Development Policy Review: only 10% of revisions go back to referees.

·       Journal of Development Effectiveness: 7.7% were sent back to referees

·       Journal of Development Studies: not tracked, but less than 20% go back to referees

·       Journal of African Economies: 52% are sent back to referees

·       Economia: 70% go back to referees.

·       EDCC: does not track this, but first revisions are usually sent back to referees.

·       World Development, World Development Perspectives, WBRO, and WBER do not track this, and results may vary a lot by editor.

Updates on the JDE Short Paper and Registered Report Tracks

The Journal of Development Economics has two other categories of papers that differ from other development journals:

·       The short paper format has proved popular. There were 148 submissions in 2023 (about 8% of total submissions), and 21 short papers were accepted. These papers follow the model of AER Insights, ReStat, etc in which papers are either conditionally accepted or rejected, and so any revisions are minor and are not sent back to referees.

·       The JDE registered reports had 19 stage 1 acceptances in 2023, and 1 stage 2 acceptance, reflecting a lag from COVID when there were not many new submissions. They have a website jdepreresults.org which tracks the stage 1 and stage 2 registered reports, but some of the data was lost when transitioning the website, so if you have a registered report accepted that is not listed there, please let the journal know.

Other Development Journal News

Finally, I asked the journals if they had any other major news or changes to report. Here are what they wanted to share:

·       At EDCC, Prashant Bharadwaj has replaced Marcel Fafchamps as editor. Thanks to Marcel for 10 years at the helm. The journal is one of the few development journals with a submission fee ($50), but offers a fee waiver to referees who have submitted a timely report in the year prior to submission.

·       Other editorial changes are Ganeshan Wignaraja replacing Colin Kirkpatrick as co-editor at Development Policy Review, and Marie Gardner and Ashu Handa taking over from Manny Jimenez at the Journal of Development Effectiveness.

·       The Journal of Development Effectiveness notes they are implementing a set of actions to raise awareness about transparency, ethics and equity in research, and to address power imbalances among HIC-L&MIC research teams. The editors note they are particularly concerned with research involving primary data collection in an L&MIC where there is no author from an institution in that country. For articles submitted to JDEff that fall into this category, they will require the authors to complete a short author reflexivity statement that will be published along with the article. The statement will explain the contribution of each author per Taylor & Francis authorship criteria, which are consistent with the criteria established by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Authors will be asked to explain why there is no contributing author from the study location, specifically, whether any team member based in the study location made a ’significant contribution to conception, study design, execution or acquisition of data,’ and if so, why they were not subsequently invited to review the manuscript and take responsibility for its contents. And for work involving randomized controlled trials or interviews with vulnerable groups, authors will also be asked to answer a set of questions about research ethics. Final manuscript acceptance and publication in JDEff will be based on the scientific quality of the work as well as an assessment of whether the work was conducted in an equitable, inclusive and ethical manner.

Finally, thanks again to all the editors for all the time and effort they devote to improving the quality and visibility of development research. As you can see, they have a lot to deal with!

Lead Economist, Development Research Group, World Bank

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Water security is critical for poverty reduction, but billions will remain without water access unless urgent action is taken

WASHINGTON, May 20, 2024 — Access to safe drinking water and sanitation, reliable water-supply for agriculture and industry, and protection against droughts and floods are essential for human and economic development, a World Bank report released on Monday states.

Over the past 20 years, the number of people lacking safe drinking water and basic sanitation has increased by 197 million and 211 million, respectively. Today, over two billion people still lack access to safe drinking water, and 3.5 billion are deprived of safely managed sanitation facilities. Resulting infectious diseases contribute to at least 1.4 million annual deaths and 50% of global malnutrition.

Lack of access to safe water and sanitation is particularly harmful in childhood, Water for Shared Prosperity , a report released at the 10 th World Water Forum in Bali, Indonesia by the World Bank Group and the Government of Indonesia, says. Inadequate and unsafe water affects early childhood development, and time spent fetching water, inadequate sanitation and hygiene and droughts or floods disrupt learning and lead to school dropouts.

Climate change is amplifying water-related risks. Driven by global emissions, developing countries are most affected by climate shocks. Between 2000 and 2021, developing countries experienced more severe droughts and longer lasting floods than advanced economies, with long-term effects on nutrition, school attendance and economic welfare. Developing countries disproportionately rely on water-dependent sectors, particularly agriculture, for employment. Globally, over 800 million people are at high-risk of droughts and twice as many live in flood-risk hotspots.

“To improve livelihoods, significant reforms and investments are needed to provide efficiently managed water and sanitation services to those without access, and to strengthen resilience against hydro-climatic risks,” said World Bank Vice President for East Asia and the Pacific Manuela V. Ferro , who is leading the World Bank team at the World Water Forum.

Water for Shared Prosperity offers specific recommendations on how to improve water security in developing countries: Protecting depleting aquifers and unevenly distributed freshwater resources will require more international cooperation, implementing proven nature-based solutions such as reforestation and investing in water storage infrastructure to prevent run-off and make water available in dry periods.

Policies to upgrade housing, and land use regulations to prevent construction in flood-prone areas can reduce exposure. Early warning systems and insurance can help households and farmers cope with extreme hydro-climatic shocks.

Reforming water tariffs and poorly-targeted subsidies, while ensuring affordability for low-income households, can help maintain and expand services and allocate scarce water resources fairly. Service providers will also need to enhance their operations, reducing water losses and lowering operating costs. Supported by policies that ensure transparency and accountability, the private sector can offer valuable expertise to enhance efficiency and manage complex infrastructure.

A spotlight section of the report examines how Indonesia, the host of this year's triennial World Water Forum, is addressing water security challenges. Indonesia has made significant investments to enhance resilience to climate-related risks, including investments in 61 dams to store water and increase irrigated areas.  A Community-Based Water Supply Program has provided more than 24 million people with improved water facilities. The government has prioritized reducing pollution and environmental degradation in the Citarum River Basin in West Java, and is pioneering treatment of peat water to making it suitable for drinking through the National Urban Water Supply project.

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Young women in Rio favela hope to overcome poverty and violence to play in Women's World Cup in 2027

R IO DE JANEIRO (AP) — A 20-minute drive separates the historic Maracana Stadium from the Complexo do Alemao, the biggest complex of favelas in Rio de Janeiro and one of the most impoverished and violent.

One of its residents, 15-year-old soccer player Kaylane Alves dos Santos, hopes her powerful shots and impressive dribbles will allow her to cover that short distance to the stadium in three years to play for Brazil's national team in the final of the 2027 Women's World Cup.

That chance, once remote, became more realistic on Friday when FIFA members voted to make Brazil the first Latin American country to host the Women's World Cup.

Local organizers have suggested that both the opening match and the final are likely to be played at the 78,000-seat Maracana Stadium that staged the final matches of the 1950 and the 2014 men's soccer World Cups.

Teenager dos Santos knows the hurdles for her to ever play for Brazil remain enormous — in 2027 or later. She doesn't have a professional club to play for, she only trains twice a week, and her nutrition is not the best due to limited food choices in the favela.

Most importantly, she often can't leave home to play when police and drug dealers shoot at each other in Complexo do Alemao .

Still, she is excited and hopeful about Brazil hosting the Women's World Cup, resulting in a big boost to her confidence.

“We have a dream (of playing for Brazil in the Women’s World Cup), and if we have that chance it will be the best thing in the world,” dos Santos told The Associated Press this week after a training session in the Complexo do Alemao.

She and about 70 other young women in the Bola de Ouro project train on an artificial grass pitch in a safe region of the 3-square kilometers long (1.15 square mile) community.

If not on the pitch, Dos Santos and her teammates will be happy enough just to attend games of a tournament they could only dream of watching up close until FIFA members voted for Brazil over the Germany-Netherlands-Belgium joint bid. The Women's World Cup was played for the first time in 1991 and will have its 10th edition in 2027.

A five-time champion in men's soccer, more than any other country, Brazil has yet to win its first Women's World Cup trophy. By then, it is unlikely superstar Marta, aged 38, will be in the roster. Dos Santos and thousands of young female footballers who have overcome sexism to take up the sport are keen to get inspiration from the six-time FIFA player of the year award winner and write their own history on home soil.

As many female footballers experience in Brazil, dos Santos and her teenage teammates rarely play without boys on their teams. Until recently, they also had to share the pitch with five-year-old girls, which didn't allow the older players to train as hard as they would like.

“(The Women's World Cup in Brazil) makes us focus even more in trying to get better. We need to be able to play in this,” said 16-year-old Kamilly Alves dos Santos, Kaylane's sister and also a player on the team. “We need to keep training, sharing our things."

Their team, which has already faced academy sides of big local clubs like Botafogo, is trained by two city activists who once tried to become players themselves.

Diogo Chaves, 38, and Webert Machado, 37, work hard to get some of their players to the Women's World Cup in Brazil, but if that's not possible they will be happy by keeping them in school.

Their non-profit group is funded solely by donations.

“At first, basically, the children wanted to eat. But now we have all of this,” said Chaves, adding that the project began three years ago. “We believe they can get to the national team. But our biggest challenge is opportunity. There's little for children from here, not only for the girls.”

Machado said the two coaches “are not here to fool anyone” and do not believe all the young women they train will become professionals.

“What we want from them is for they to be honest people, we all need to have our character,” Machado said. “We want to play and make them become nurses, doctors, firefighters, some profession in the future."

The two dos Santos sisters, as do many of their teammates, believe that reaching the Women's World Cup as Complexo do Alemao residents is possible. Brazil has more than 100 professional women's soccer teams, with other players living in favelas, too.

But it won't be easy.

“Sometimes I have to cancel appointments because of shootings, because there’s barricades on fire,” she said. “Sometimes police tell us to go back home, they say we can’t come down and point their guns to me, to my mother,” said Kamilly.

Her sister hopes the pair will overcome the violence, against the odds.

“I want to earn my living in soccer, fulfill all dreams," Kaylane says. "And I want to leave the Complexo do Alemao. I want to make it happen.”

AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer