living below the poverty line essay

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• After-School Programs
• Child Care Food Program
• Healthy Relationship Education
• Safe Connections
• SNAP (Stop Now And Plan)
• Board Members
• Senior Leadership
• 2020 Annual Report
• 2020 Annual Audit
• 2019 Annual 990
• 2019 Annual Audit
• 2018-2019 Annual Report
• 2018 Annual 990
• 2018 Annual Audit
• 2017 Annual Report
• 2017 Annual 990
• 2017 Annual Audit
• 2016 Annual Report
• 2016 Annual 990
• 2016 Annual Audits

What Does Living in Poverty Look Like in America?

January has been officially designated Poverty in America Awareness Month to shine a light on what it means to barely get by on next to nothing. Poverty is something that is hard for people to see – mostly because those who are poor try to hide it while others don’t want to see it.

However, understanding poverty in America can help create discussions and guide communities toward solutions. It can make us more sympathetic to our neighbors and drive us to do better to help our most vulnerable residents. 

Get to know how Americans define poverty and what it means to live with less.

How Does the United States Define Poverty?

Before you can look at the number of people living in poverty and trends related to impoverished families, it’s important to set a clear definition of what poverty is. The United States Census Bureau bases poverty on annual household income and the size of the family within each home. If a family’s income falls below the minimum level set by the Bureau, then they are considered impoverished. 

As the number of family members in a household increases, the threshold for poverty increases as well. This is because a parent caring for one child needs less to sustain themselves (for example) than a parent caring for three children and an elderly relative. 

In 2019, the Census Bureau set the poverty level for one person living alone under the age of 65 at $13,300. This is the bare minimum that a person would need to get by to cover rent costs for one, food, clothing, and other needs. For two adults under the age of 65, this number increases to $17,120. For one adult and one child, the number is set at $17,622. 

This doesn’t mean that a family living right over the poverty line is comfortable. Any household approaching this level is likely to struggle financially throughout the year. 

The poverty level also changes by year. The Census Bureau releases numbers that are adjusted for inflation and the cost of living in the United States. That being said, this number is still an average. One number cannot account for the cost of living in New York compared to Omaha compared to Seattle compared to Los Angeles. This is meant to serve as a guideline and a barometer for poverty in the country.

Who is Impoverished in America? 

Once you have a clear definition of poverty, you can evaluate who falls under this grouping and identify trends based on demographics and behavior. Using data from the Census, Poverty USA was able to create a graphic reporting statistics based on various groups of people in 2018.

• 16.2% of children (11.9 million kids) lived in poverty in 2018. Almost 10% of seniors fell under this category
• While 10.1% of white people fall under the poverty threshold, 17.6% of Hispanic Americans, 20.8% of Black Americans, and 25.4% of Native Americans are considered impoverished. 
• The poverty rate for single-parent families with no wife present is 12.7% but the rate for single-parent families with no husband present is 24.9%. 

These numbers highlight how gender, race, and age play key factors in the ability to secure income and maintain a comfortable lifestyle in modern America.

The COVID-19 Pandemic Will Increase Poverty Numbers

In most years, you can look at poverty trends as a reflection of the economy as a whole. If employment numbers decrease and consumer confidence grows, then it is likely that poverty numbers also decreased. However, the Coronavirus pandemic in 2020 created dramatic upheavals in employment and lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. This has left families scrambling to find work – or to enter the workforce after a breadwinner passes.

According to a study by Columbia University , eight million Americans entered poverty between May and September of 2020, bringing the total number of Americans living in poverty to 55 million. In September alone, the poverty rate increased from 15% of the population to 16.7%, particularly affected families of color. 

Despite the fact that cities are opening up during the Coronavirus pandemic , many families still don’t have enough to make ends meet. Landlords followed the stays on evictions during the spring but many states ended these protections over the summer. Families that had small retirement accounts or nest eggs in savings spent that money this year and are now just scraping by. The CARES Act provided each family with at least $1,200 and an added unemployment check of $600 per week, but that money has since run out and the checks have stopped coming – but the bills haven’t. 

Poverty Looks Different Across America

While defining poverty is good for counting families and understanding the number of people affected each year, it doesn’t really describe what it means to be impoverished. Not having money – or making below what is sustainable – has reaching impacts across a community.

• Living in poverty means being “food insecure,” or not knowing where your next meal will come from. It means empty refrigerators and hungry summers when there aren’t school lunches to tide kids over. 
• Living in poverty means hot summers and cold winters as families can’t afford the electricity to keep an air conditioner or heater running. 
• Poverty means not having internet access to attend virtual school during the pandemic or not having a computer or phone to apply for jobs and respond to calls for interviews. 
• Poverty creates a dependence on public transit regardless of whether the city has a reliable bus and train infrastructure or not. This can limit a family’s ability to get groceries, attend doctor’s appointments, or make it to work on time. 

These are just a few examples of what it means to be poor in America. In the Tampa Bay area , 21.8% of residents live below the poverty level. Many of our friends and neighbors work long hours and multiple jobs to make ends meet, while still coming home to hungry kids and overdue bills. Living in poverty means constantly fighting to survive the next week and the next month.

What Can We Do?  

There is no easy solution to helping families living in poverty, but awareness is an important first step. By reading this and learning the staggering numbers of impoverished Americans, you can truly realize how many kids, adults, and families are just barely getting by. 

At Family Resources, we work to help communities support their neighbors – particularly in regard to helping vulnerable youth. While the holidays are over for 2020, you can still learn about ways to help homeless youth who have been kicked out of their homes or who have run away from dangerous situations. Additionally, you can learn what it means to be homeless and how kids and teens hide their poverty from friends and teachers. Finally, be mindful of the effects of the pandemic and how teens are more likely to run away as unemployment rises and people are told to stay home.    

If you want to support poor and impoverished families in our area, please consider donating to Family Resources . We provide support to homeless youth who are living on the street or couch surfing from one house to the next. We also provide healthy meals to home daycare providers so kids can get nutritious and filling lunches daily. With your support, we can build up those who need our help the most. 

One person can’t eliminate poverty in America. But hundreds of small actions from people across the country can help vulnerable families and neighbors.

7 Essays About Poverty: Example Essays and Prompts

Essays about poverty give valuable insight into the economic situation that we share globally. Read our guide with poverty essay examples and prompts for your paper.

In the US, the official poverty rate in 2022 was 11.5 percent, with 37.9 million people living below the poverty line. With a global pandemic, cost of living crisis, and climate change on the rise, we’ve seen poverty increase due to various factors. As many of us face adversity daily, we can look to essays about poverty from some of the world’s greatest speakers for inspiration and guidance.

There is nothing but a lack of social vision to prevent us from paying an adequate wage to every American citizen whether he be a hospital worker, laundry worker, maid or day laborer. There is nothing except shortsightedness to prevent us from guaranteeing an annual minimum—and livable—income for every American family. Martin Luther King Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?

Writing a poverty essay can be challenging due to the many factors contributing to poverty and the knock-on effects of living below the poverty line . For example, homelessness among low-income individuals stems from many different causes.

It’s important to note that poverty exists beyond the US, with many developing countries living in extreme poverty without access to essentials like clean water and housing. For help with your essays, check out our round-up of the best essay checkers .

Essays About Poverty: Top Examples

1. pensioner poverty: fear of rise over decades as uk under-40s wealth falls, 2. the surprising poverty levels across the u.s., 3. why poverty persists in america, 4. post-pandemic poverty is rising in america’s suburbs.

• 5. The Basic Facts About Children in Poverty
• 6. The State of America’s Children 
• 7. COVID-19: This is how many Americans now live below the poverty line

10 Poverty Essay Topics

1. the causes of poverty, 2. the negative effects of poverty, 3. how countries can reduce poverty rates, 4. the basic necessities and poverty, 5. how disabilities can lead to poverty, 6. how the cycle of poverty unfolds , 7. universal basic income and its relationship to poverty, 8. interview someone who has experience living in poverty, 9. the impact of the criminal justice system on poverty, 10. the different ways to create affordable housing.

There is growing concern about increasing pensioner poverty in the UK in the coming decades. Due to financial challenges like the cost of living crisis, rent increases, and the COVID-19 pandemic, under 40s have seen their finances shrink.

Osborne discusses the housing wealth gap in this article, where many under the 40s currently pay less in a pension due to rent prices. While this means they will have less pension available, they will also retire without owning a home, resulting in less personal wealth than previous generations. Osborne delves into the causes and gaps in wealth between generations in this in-depth essay.

“Those under-40s have already been identified as  facing the biggest hit from rising mortgage rates , and last week a study by the financial advice firm Hargreaves Lansdown found that almost a third of 18- to 34-year-olds had stopped or cut back on their pension contributions in order to save money.” Hilary Osborne,  The Guardian

In this 2023 essay, Jeremy Ney looks at the poverty levels across the US, stating that poverty has had the largest one-year increase in history. According to the most recent census, child poverty has more than doubled from 2021 to 2022.

Ney states that the expiration of government support and inflation has created new financial challenges for US families. With the increased cost of living and essential items like food and housing sharply increasing, more and more families have fallen below the poverty line. Throughout this essay, Ney displays statistics and data showing the wealth changes across states, ethnic groups, and households.

“Poverty in America reflects the inequality that plagues U.S. households. While certain regions have endured this pain much more than others, this new rising trend may spell ongoing challenges for even more communities.” Jeremy Ney,  TIME

In this New York Times article, a Pulitzer Prize-winning sociologist explores why poverty exists in North America.

The American poor have access to cheap, mass-produced goods, as every American does. But that doesn’t mean they can access what matters most. Matthew Desmond,  The New York Times

The U.S. Census Bureau recently released its annual data on poverty, revealing contrasting trends for 2022. While one set of findings indicated that the overall number of Americans living in poverty remained stable compared to the previous two years, another survey highlighted a concerning increase in child poverty. The rate of child poverty in the U.S. doubled from 2021 to 2022, a spike attributed mainly to the cessation of the expanded child tax credit following the pandemic. These varied outcomes underscore the Census Bureau’s multifaceted methods to measure poverty.

“The nation’s suburbs accounted for the majority of increases in the poor population following the onset of the pandemic” Elizabeth Kneebone and Alan Berube,  Brookings

5.  The Basic Facts About Children in Poverty

Nearly 11 million children are living in poverty in America. This essay explores ow the crisis reached this point—and what steps must be taken to solve it.

“In America, nearly 11 million children are poor. That’s 1 in 7 kids, who make up almost one-third of all people living in poverty in this country.” Areeba Haider,  Center for American Progress

6.  The State of America’s Children  

This essay articles how, despite advancements, children continue to be the most impoverished demographic in the U.S., with particular subgroups — such as children of color, those under five, offspring of single mothers, and children residing in the South — facing the most severe poverty levels.

“Growing up in poverty has wide-ranging, sometimes lifelong, effects on children, putting them at a much higher risk of experiencing behavioral, social, emotional, and health challenges. Childhood poverty also plays an instrumental role in impairing a child’s ability and capacity to learn, build skills, and succeed academically.” Children’s Defense Fund

7.  COVID-19: This is how many Americans now live below the poverty line

This essay explores how the economic repercussions of the coronavirus pandemic 2020 led to a surge in U.S. poverty rates, with unemployment figures reaching unprecedented heights. The writer provides data confirming that individuals at the lowest economic strata bore the brunt of these challenges, indicating that the recession might have exacerbated income disparities, further widening the chasm between the affluent and the underprivileged.

“Poverty in the U.S. increased in 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic hammered the economy and unemployment soared. Those at the bottom of the economic ladder were hit hardest, new figures confirm, suggesting that the recession may have widened the gap between the rich and the poor.” Elena Delavega,  World Econmic Forum

If you’re tasked with writing an essay about poverty, consider using the below topics. They offer pointers for outlining and planning an essay about this challenging topic.

One of the most specific poverty essay topics to address involves the causes of poverty. You can craft an essay to examine the most common causes of extreme poverty. Here are a few topics you might want to include:

• Racial discrimination, particularly among African Americans, has been a common cause of poverty throughout American history. Discrimination and racism can make it hard for people to get the education they need, making it nearly impossible to get a job.
• A lack of access to adequate health care can also lead to poverty. When people do not have access to healthcare, they are more likely to get sick. This could make it hard for them to go to work while also leading to major medical bills.
• Inadequate food and water can lead to poverty as well. If people’s basic needs aren’t met, they focus on finding food and water instead of getting an education they can use to find a better job.

These are just a few of the most common causes of poverty you might want to highlight in your essay. These topics could help people see why some people are more likely to become impoverished than others. You might also be interested in these essays about poverty .

Poverty affects everyone, and the impacts of an impoverished lifestyle are very real. Furthermore, the disparities when comparing adult poverty to child poverty are also significant. This opens the doors to multiple possible essay topics. Here are a few points to include:

• When children live in poverty, their development is stunted. For example, they might not be able to get to school on time due to a lack of transportation, making it hard for them to keep up with their peers. Child poverty also leads to malnutrition, which can stunt their development.
• Poverty can impact familial relationships as well. For example, members of the same family could fight for limited resources, making it hard for family members to bond. In addition, malnutrition can stunt the growth of children.
• As a side effect of poverty, people have difficulty finding a safe place to live. This creates a challenging environment for everyone involved, and it is even harder for children to grow and develop.
• When poverty leads to homelessness, it is hard for someone to get a job. They don’t have an address to use for physical communication, which leads to employment concerns.

These are just a few of the many side effects of poverty. Of course, these impacts are felt by people across the board, but it is not unusual for children to feel the effects of poverty that much more. You might also be interested in these essays about unemployment .

Different countries take different approaches to reduce the number of people living in poverty

The issue of poverty is a major human rights concern, and many countries explore poverty reduction strategies to improve people’s quality of life. You might want to examine different strategies that different countries are taking while also suggesting how some countries can do more. A few ways to write this essay include:

• Explore the poverty level in America, comparing it to the poverty level of a European country. Then, explore why different countries take different strategies.
• Compare the minimum wage in one state, such as New York, to the minimum wage in another state, such as Alabama. Why is it higher in one state? What does raising the minimum wage do to the cost of living?
• Highlight a few advocacy groups and nonprofit organizations actively lobbying their governments to do more for low-income families. Then, talk about why some efforts are more successful than others.

Different countries take different approaches to reduce the number of people living in poverty. Poverty within each country is such a broad topic that you could write a different essay on how poverty could be decreased within the country. For more, check out our list of simple essays topics for intermediate writers .

You could also write an essay on the necessities people need to survive. You could take a look at information published by the United Nations , which focuses on getting people out of the cycle of poverty across the globe. The social problem of poverty can be addressed by giving people the necessities they need to survive, particularly in rural areas. Here are some of the areas you might want to include:

• Affordable housing
• Fresh, healthy food and clean water
• Access to an affordable education
• Access to affordable healthcare

Giving everyone these necessities could significantly improve their well-being and get people out of absolute poverty. You might even want to talk about whether these necessities vary depending on where someone is living.

There are a lot of medical and social issues that contribute to poverty, and you could write about how disabilities contribute to poverty. This is one of the most important essay topics because people could be disabled through no fault of their own. Some of the issues you might want to address in this essay include:

• Talk about the road someone faces if they become disabled while serving overseas. What is it like for people to apply for benefits through the Veterans’ Administration?
• Discuss what happens if someone becomes disabled while at work. What is it like for someone to pursue disability benefits if they are hurt doing a blue-collar job instead of a desk job?
• Research and discuss the experiences of disabled people and how their disability impacts their financial situation.

People who are disabled need to have money to survive for many reasons, such as the inability to work, limitations at home, and medical expenses. A lack of money, in this situation, can lead to a dangerous cycle that can make it hard for someone to be financially stable and live a comfortable lifestyle.

Many people talk about the cycle of poverty, yet many aren’t entirely sure what this means or what it entails. A few key points you should address in this essay include:

• When someone is born into poverty, income inequality can make it hard to get an education.
• A lack of education makes it hard for someone to get into a good school, which gives them the foundation they need to compete for a good job. 
• A lack of money can make it hard for someone to afford college, even if they get into a good school.
• Without attending a good college, it can be hard for someone to get a good job. This makes it hard for someone to support themselves or their families. 
• Without a good paycheck, it is nearly impossible for someone to keep their children out of poverty, limiting upward mobility into the middle class.

The problem of poverty is a positive feedback loop. It can be nearly impossible for those who live this every day to escape. Therefore, you might want to explore a few initiatives that could break the cycle of world poverty and explore other measures that could break this feedback loop.

Many business people and politicians have floated the idea of a universal basic income to give people the basic resources they need to survive. While this hasn’t gotten a lot of serious traction, you could write an essay to shed light on this idea. A few points to hit on include:

• What does a universal basic income mean, and how is it distributed?
• Some people are concerned about the impact this would have on taxes. How would this be paid for?
• What is the minimum amount of money someone would need to stay out of poverty? Is it different in different areas?
• What are a few of the biggest reasons major world governments haven’t passed this?

This is one of the best essay examples because it gives you a lot of room to be creative. However, there hasn’t been a concrete structure for implementing this plan, so you might want to afford one.

Another interesting topic you might want to explore is interviewing someone living in poverty or who has been impoverished. While you can talk about statistics all day, they won’t be as powerful as interviewing someone who has lived that life. A few questions you might want to ask during your interview include:

• What was it like growing up?
• How has living in poverty made it hard for you to get a job?
• What do you feel people misunderstand about those who live in poverty?
• When you need to find a meal, do you have a place you go to? Or is it somewhere different every day?
• What do you think is the main contributor to people living in poverty?

Remember that you can also craft different questions depending on your responses. You might want to let the interviewee read the essay when you are done to ensure all the information is accurate and correct.

The criminal justice system and poverty tend to go hand in hand. People with criminal records are more likely to be impoverished for several reasons. You might want to write an essay that hits on some of these points:

• Discuss the discriminatory practices of the criminal justice system both as they relate to socioeconomic status and as they relate to race.
• Explore just how hard it is for someone to get a job if they have a criminal record. Discuss how this might contribute to a life of poverty.
• Dive into how this creates a positive feedback loop. For example, when someone cannot get a job due to a criminal record, they might have to steal to survive, which worsens the issue.
• Review what the criminal justice system might be like for someone with resources when compared to someone who cannot afford to hire expert witnesses or pay for a good attorney.

You might want to include a few examples of disparate sentences for people in different socioeconomic situations to back up your points. 

Affordable housing can make a major difference when someone is trying to escape poverty

Many poverty-related problems could be reduced if people had access to affordable housing. While the cost of housing has increased dramatically in the United States , some initiatives exist to create affordable housing. Here are a few points to include:

• Talk about public programs that offer affordable housing to people from disadvantaged backgrounds.
• Discuss private programs, such as Habitat for Humanity , doing similar things.
• Review the positive impacts that stable housing has on both adults and children.
• Dive into other measures local and federal governments could take to provide more affordable housing for people.

There are a lot of political and social angles to address with this essay, so you might want to consider spreading this out across multiple papers. Affordable housing can make a major difference when trying to escape poverty. If you want to learn more, check out our essay writing tips !

Meet Rachael, the editor at Become a Writer Today. With years of experience in the field, she is passionate about language and dedicated to producing high-quality content that engages and informs readers. When she's not editing or writing, you can find her exploring the great outdoors, finding inspiration for her next project.

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Poverty Is a Choice

Extreme poverty has declined, but the line is very low.

We live in what often feels like a biblically terrible time, marked by mass extinctions, deep recessions, epidemics, climate emergencies, inequality, and forever wars. But one thing, at least, has gotten better. More than 1 billion people have escaped extreme poverty—so many, so fast, that the world might be able to declare, within a decade, the end of this most miserable form of deprivation. “The global poverty rate is now lower than it has ever been in recorded history,” Jim Yong Kim, a former president of the World Bank, recently argued . “This is one of the greatest human achievements of our time.”

Or perhaps not. In an acidic rebuke to world leaders, the outgoing United Nations special rapporteur on poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, argues that the effort to end global poverty has failed. More people live in deprivation now than two decades ago. “We squandered a decade in the fight against poverty, with misplaced triumphalism blocking the very reforms that could have prevented the worst impacts of the pandemic,” Alston wrote in his last report .

So who’s right: Alston or Kim? The pessimistic argument is a hard one to make when looking at the raw, headline numbers. The global extreme-poverty rate fell from 36 percent in 1990 to 10 percent in 2015; the number of poor people dropped from 2 billion to 700 million. But Alston believes that by focusing only on those numbers, the world is deluding itself.

Read: A moral case for giving people money

The divisions between the World Bank’s economists and the UN’s special rapporteur are in some sense technical, about where to set the poverty line. They are in a more important sense interpretive, about whether progress has been fast or slow, and whether today’s global poverty counts are laudable or tragic.

This is a realm of yes-and s and no-but s, not direct refutations. Extreme poverty has declined rapidly, but the extreme-poverty line is very low: A person living below it spends no more than $1.90 a day, enough in many poor countries to cover some starch, a few fruits and vegetables, some cooking oil, a bit of protein, and that’s about it—with nothing left over for utilities, education, health care, transportation, or investment in wealth-generating assets, such as a cow or a motorbike. That poverty threshold represents “a staggeringly low standard of living, well below any reasonable conception of a life with dignity,” Alston argues—it is a catastrophic-destitution measure, not a poverty measure. He emphasizes the lack of progress made at the $3.20-a-day and $5.50-a-day poverty lines, too. Half the world lives on less than the latter figure.

Alston takes issue with the fact that the World Bank’s extreme-poverty line is an absolute measure, not a relative one: It sets a line and sees how many people cross it, country by country, rather than pegging the poverty threshold to median income, country by country. But “relative poverty is what really counts these days,” Alston told me, as it captures social exclusion, and the way that living on a few dollars a day is more challenging in middle-income countries like India and Kenya than in low-income countries like Afghanistan and Chad. “In a poorer country,” the bank itself explains , “participating in the job market may require only clothing and food, whereas someone in a richer society may also need access to the internet, transportation, and a cell phone.”

The bank also acknowledges that the global extreme-poverty line is low. It has generated a measure that includes relative poverty, and produces counts at the $3.20-a-day and $5.50-a-day lines. Its economists, researchers, and program experts stress that rising above the extreme-poverty line is no guarantee against malnutrition, stunted growth, early death, or any of the other horrible consequences of destitution.

But Alston’s most controversial, and most important, argument is that the focus on progress measured against the $1.90-a-day line—the prevalence of “everything’s getting better” arguments, made by Davos types like Bill Gates and Steven Pinker —has hampered progress toward true poverty eradication, and toward civil rights, social inclusion, and a basic standard of living for all. “By being able to rely so heavily on the World Bank's flagship figure, they can say, ‘Look, progress has been consistent. We’ve been doing great,’” Alston told me. “The implication of that is that the triumph of neoliberalism has brought with it very significant benefits for poor people. In reality, that’s just not the case.”

Read: How many people in the world are actually poor?

What if world leaders and multilateral institutions focused on the $5.50 line, or measures of poverty that capture social exclusion and relative deprivation? What if the headline story were that half the world still qualifies as desperately poor, and poverty head counts remain stubbornly high in dozens of countries? What if the story were not that we are succeeding, but that we are failing?

That story would not capture all the good that has happened in terms of infant-mortality rates falling, school-enrollment numbers rising, and malnutrition fading. But it would hold the world accountable for the fact that poverty is, always and everywhere, a choice. Alston’s view, and a necessary one, is that the world cannot wait for economic expansion to lift people above the poverty line. It cannot count on trade compacts and infrastructure projects and the ticking of GDP growth rates from 2.3 to 3.2 percent to do it. It needs direct interventions by governments, as fast as possible, to eliminate inequality and build safety nets, even in the poorest places.

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What does living at the poverty line look like?

Inflation affects families at different income levels unevenly as the poorest Americans pay a larger share of their incomes on food and housing.

Updated on Mon, September 18, 2023 by the USAFacts Team

In 1963, a statistician for the Social Security Administration named Mollie Orshansky developed what we commonly refer to as the poverty line — a federal marker that indicates who is poor in America.

Before then, the government lacked a method to measure how many families struggled to afford basic necessities. Orshansky drew from her experience as a former Department of Agriculture (USDA) economist. She based her calculations on one of the most critical expenses for a family: its food bill. By tallying the cost to feed a family of four, based on a no-frills food plan developed by the USDA, she calculated the corresponding income needed to cover these meals plus living expenses.

Orshansky applied this model to create 124 poverty thresholds , accounting for age, gender, family size, and other designations.

What does the poverty line look like today?

To this day, the Census Bureau issues its poverty thresholds based on Orshansky’s work. These figures take into account household size and income, as well as other factors, such as age. These poverty thresholds are used for statistical purposes to calculate the number of Americans living in poverty. They are also the starting points from which federal “poverty guidelines” are calculated.

According to the most recent report issued in January 2023, the poverty threshold for a family of four is $29,960 . For an individual, the poverty threshold is $14,891.

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issues its poverty guidelines based on the Census Bureau’s poverty thresholds. They’re used to determine the financial eligibility for certain government programs, including Head Start , the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (known as SNAP or sometimes referred to as food stamps), the National School Lunch Program, and the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program.

According to HHS’s measurement, a family of four in 2023 would be considered impoverished if their income is $30,000 or lower . Alaska and Hawaii use a slightly different measure due to a higher cost of living in those states. The poverty guideline is $37,500 in Alaska and $34,500 in Hawaii .

Comparatively, the 2023 median household income for a family of four is $98,487 .

How many people are living near the poverty line?

The Census Bureau estimated that in 2021, 11.6% of Americans — roughly 38 million people — lived at or below the poverty level. That year, the poverty threshold [1] was $27,740 for a family of four and $13,788 for an individual .

The share of people living in poverty in the US has generally been decreasing since its most recent peak in 2010 — on the heels of the Great Recession — when the poverty rate was 15.1%.

The percentage of children in poverty has also been decreasing over the last decade. In 2010, 1 in 4 children (25.3%) lived in poverty in America. In 2021, the rate of childhood poverty was 16.1%.

What does spending look like at the poverty line?

Since 2020, the cost of managing daily life in the US has risen , especially when it comes to paying for essentials such as food and fuel — and Americans have taken notice. A survey conducted by the US Census Bureau in June and July 2023 showed that over one-third of Americans find it somewhat or very difficult to pay for their usual household expenses.

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For many of the poorest Americans, essential expenses can be a heavy burden. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data shows that lower-income households tend to experience higher inflation rates than those with higher incomes. This is partly because poorer households must spend a larger portion of their incomes on housing, food, and healthcare.

People who live near the poverty line spend a larger share of their income on housing . Compared to the national average of 33.8% , families and individuals earning under $30,000 paid 41.2% of their income on housing, according to a BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey . This includes the cost of rent or a mortgage, utilities, repairs, and other miscellaneous items such as furniture and cleaning supplies.

The poorest Americans pay the highest share of their income on housing.

Similarly, lower-income Americans paid a higher share of their income on food. The average family or individual spent 12.4% of their income on food in 2021. For households with incomes less than $15,000, that share was 16.7%, and for those whose incomes were between $15,000 and $29,000, the share was 14.1%.

There were also disparities in healthcare. The average spent on items such as insurance, medical services, and drugs was 8.1% of a household’s income. For those with incomes less than $15,000, that share was 8.6%, and for those who earned between $15,000 and $29,000, it rose to 10.9%.

Low-income families are also more likely to be cost-burdened by childcare expenses . According to Census Bureau data, family childcare costs increased by 25% between 2015 and 2020.

Explore more data on poverty in America , and get the data directly in your inbox by subscribing to our weekly newsletter .

The Census Bureau's poverty threshold reflects the weighted average threshold, sourced from the 2022 Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS ASEC).

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Life Amidst Poverty

I have lived in poverty both as a child and as an adult, and I can say with full confidence that it is a life-crushing force. I hated it. “Poverty” is also one of the most misunderstood labels that gets slapped onto individuals without their approval—cast upon them simultaneously by both unseen and more visible forces of society.

Poverty is a word loaded with preconceived notions, common misperceptions, and seemingly innocuous assumptions. What the word does not do is delve below its surface meaning, into the reality of poverty—a world that no one wants to live in.

Poverty is exhausting. Poverty is despair and desperation-inducing. Poverty is soul, dream and hope crushing. Poverty is like being enclosed in a prison cell with no doors or windows. It feels claustrophobic, as if there is no way out. Only the most resilient do not give up. Still, there is no guarantee that life will get better—and those in poverty know this all too well. They either become hardened or submit to fate. You don’t live life, you don’t thrive—you survive. You wonder if you are predestined, like a caste in another country, to live out a life destitute of fulfillment—whether financial, professional or just having a better life.

These are the very thoughts that consumed me in times of poverty. And yet, I never stopped believing that there must be a way out. The “how” and the “why” of my situation—resounding questions that were never sated—eventually fell by the wayside as I pushed towards hope. The very thing that brought despair and darkness motivated me to dig out of that prison, to fight with everything within me, to find that light that must exist outside of the walls.

In America, there is this prevalent belief that if someone just pulls herself up by her bootstraps, she can succeed. And yet, as I have learned, it is entirely possible to work your ass off and still struggle . Whether I had boots or not, whether I was barefoot, in heels, what I really learned is that resources and access to them —a network of support, and awareness of available choices—are the most influential factors in the “making it or breaking it” of life in the US. So much of this became clear to me only later—when I had the opportunity to see outside of the tiny, claustrophobic room that I had been in for years.

Living in poverty need not be a death sentence. I decided when I was 5 years old that I wanted to secure a bachelor’s degree before I was married (which I did). Throughout my childhood, I had a voracious appetite for knowledge: I was constantly hungry to learn more. In high school, I decided that upon graduation I would leave the state and my family to start a new life for myself, even though it was extremely hard and I worked three jobs at one point. In college, I knew that I wanted to live and work overseas, to expand my perspective and learn more about the world. And when life challenges blindsided me as an adult (now with two degrees under my belt), I continued to learn what my options were, what resources were available to me, and to fight hard to provide the best opportunities that I can for my own children, so that they may never see themselves as “living in poverty” or not having a shot at a better life.

Enduring poverty is not the end of hope or life. The key things needed to break down the walls that imprison those within poverty are: outside influences, support networks such as friends or family, awareness of other opportunities, and access to resources.

With this combination, a new life is possible.

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Restoring Hope to Baltimore Requires Making College Affordable

“I’ve always wanted to go to college. I’ve wanted to be an orthodontist since I was seven,” said 16-year-old Kayla, not realizing that because she grew up in West Baltimore the odds of her dreams coming true were very slim.

There’s a long shadow cast over Baltimore’s children. Like young people across America, they know that the ability to get a good-paying job depends on college. As teens, many of them finish high school, fill out college applications, and complete financial aid forms.  But then they find out the truth: college is unaffordable.

There is a lot of talk about elite universities offering “no loans” promises and sending letters to low-income families across the country urging their children to apply.  But that effort is relevant to a tiny few. Most people who attend college go to institutions that are far from free.

Despite massive public investment in financial aid, students from families like Kayla’s who earn less than $20,000 a year are now required to pay at least $8,000 for a year of community college and more than $12,000 a year at a public university. That “net price” is what researchers like me have found to be the real bill that students and their families face after all grants (including the federal Pell and state and institutional grants) are subtracted from the sticker price of attending college. This price has gone up substantially over time, particularly since the Great Recession.  It’s climbed as real family income for most has fallen. Worse, it may well be under-stated .

College education is central to the American Dream. But the ladder people must climb to get there has eroded, and a critical rung fell off.  After a semester or two, even the most talented students from the bottom half of the income distribution find that the price of college is more than they can afford.  They have enough money to register for classes, but they cannot pay the bills long enough to graduate .  

The young people of Baltimore know this.  Researchers tracked a set of the city’s children beginning in 1982 , when the kids were in 1 st grade.  A decade and a half later, almost two-thirds enrolled in college. But by age 28, just 17 percent had earned an associates or bachelor’s degree, with another 13 percent earning a certificate.  Nearly half who grew up poor, ended up poor, especially if they were black.

It wasn’t for lack of trying. Researchers like Stefanie DeLuca, who met Kayla while doing research on young people from Baltimore’s highest poverty neighborhoods, confirm that a strong work ethic is omnipresent there. But enrolling in college exacerbates their poverty: working two or three jobs while also taking on federal and private loans takes a heavy toll. Growing numbers of undergraduates find themselves living without sufficient food or adequate housing even as they try and focus on school.

When college is unaffordable, hope is lost.  Without degrees, young people are returning to the streets with debt, disillusioned and fearful for their futures.

Today colleges and state governments set most college prices. They are failing at this job. The opportunity to get a college education is distributed in highly inequitable ways.  Rather than promoting mobility, the broken college financing system is ensuring that economic and racial inequality gets passed down – and worsened – from one generation to the next.  Americans deserve better.

Last year, Republican Governor Bill Haslam began to restore hope in Tennessee by offering tuition-free community college.  The predecessor to the Tennessee Promise, Knox Achieves, is proving effective at helping young people who would have otherwise never experienced even a 13 th year of education earn college credits.  Helping those students complete a 14 th year, and attain a credential, may require more investment, along the lines of America’s College Promise proposed by President Barack Obama.

The initiatives of Haslam and Obama were preceded by wisdom and a smart initiative in New York. In 1969, large numbers of African Americans and Puerto Ricans demanded that the City University of New York become a place that they could enter to pursue better lives.  University administrators responded by instituting an open admissions policy to complement a very low price.  An evaluation conducted over the next 30 years revealed that while the new policy did not wipe out disadvantages due to race or class (or high school academic record), it more than doubled the proportion of black women who would attain degrees. That finding is consistent with more recent studies that raise sharp questions about the contention that “college isn’t for everyone.”

National leaders need to provide hope to young adults in Baltimore and cities like it.  Federal policy must change. Simply providing financial aid isn’t getting the job done, as it requires too little from those who establish college costs.  Instead, we need a national conversation about what it means to provide a high-quality 13 th and 14 th year of public education to everyone, and then we need to pay for it. New taxes are an option – but we can also simply stop spending where investments aren’t pay off. Ending subsidies to for-profit universities is a good place to start.

There is much to do to provide hope, dignity, and a chance at a better life to America’s poor urban youth. Part of the solution must include making college affordable.

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To Combat For-Profit Schools, Provide Free Community College

Although it is widely documented that for-profit colleges routinely prey on low-income students , these schools have proven adept at beating back regulations that would curb their abuses. To decrease the attractiveness of for-profit schools, and their power to exploit students with low incomes, progressives should rally around President Obama’s proposal to provide free community college .

Over the last few years, for-profit colleges have come under fire from the Senate HELP committee, several federal agencies, and 37 state attorneys, with good reason . The for-profit education business model provides no incentive for schools to produce successful, educated college graduates. As a result, over half of the students who attend these schools fail to obtain a degree and struggle with mounting student loan debt. Those students fortunate enough to graduate have a hard time securing employment, as employers increasingly turn away candidates with degrees from for-profit schools.

For-profit colleges use a variety of unethical and sometimes illegal practices to persuade students to attend their schools. Some schools get leads on potential students through fake job postings on websites like craigslist or monster.com. Recent reports show a few top for-profit colleges utilize fake online health insurance and food stamp applications to collect information on potential students. Individuals who fall victim to phishing schemes like these are subsequently harassed with calls from for-profit schools until they speak with admissions representatives. Students report being called up to twenty times in a single morning, or as late as 11 p.m. When students finally succumb to the pressure and speak with a representative, they are subjected to recruitment tactics that are far more abusive.

  An example of training materials for recruiters at a for-profit college

Admissions representatives at several large for-profit schools say management promotes a variety of exploitative practices to secure enrollment. These tactics include asking callers— many of whom are low-income or people of color— to imagine what they will buy when they make six-figures, or how their family will feel when they no longer rely on a minimum wage job. Many representatives go as far as telling callers how worthless they are with just a high school diploma. Many students who were actively recruited in this manner were unable to afford—or clearly incapable of completing—the program. Some students even struggled with a range of disabilities such as brain damage and learning disorders . In one particularly high profile case , a Corporal for the U.S. Marines was enrolled at a large for-profit college, but was so severely impaired by a traumatic brain injury that he could not remember what classes he was taking.

Students who enroll as a result of this kind of manipulation often sign themselves into financial ruin. However, as long as the students attend classes, the school turns a profit. The entire business model of for-profit schools relies on cheating victims out of their dollars and dreams, which ultimately increases their reliance on safety net programs.

In contrast, community college provides crucial alternatives for those most frequently victimized by for-profit schools—people with low-incomes and people of color. Students with low-incomes are disproportionately affected by social factors (financial instability, health issues, transportation issues) that discourage investing financial resources in brick-and-mortar schools, in deference to online education. For-profit schools take advantage of this instability, promising increased upward mobility coupled with the flexibility of online schooling. As a result, low-income students enroll in for-profit schools at nearly four times the rate of other students.

  An example of student “profiles” targeted by recruiters at a for-profit college

By providing low-income students with the opportunity to attend community college at no cost, President Obama’s plan virtually eliminates the consumer base of these profit-seeking colleges, ending their large-scale fraud. Under President Obama’s plan , students receive full tuition funding if they are enrolled at least half-time at community college and are earning above a 2.5 GPA. The proposal is also beneficial because it permits students to receive Pell grants while they are at community college; this policy would help families afford living expenses while the primary caretaker focuses on school.

Obama’s initiative encourages low-income, at-risk students to consider local community colleges before for-profit schools, thereby increasing their potential economic mobility and financial wellbeing. Current estimates suggest that as many as 9 million students would benefit from the initiative.

While Obama’s proposal is not a blank check, it provides much more flexibility for students with low-incomes. More importantly, the plan could prevent millions of our country’s most disadvantaged people from enrolling in schools that prove far better at exploiting students than educating them.

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New York City Limits the Use of Credit Checks in Hiring

One of the recurring—and troubling—themes of TalkPoverty posts has been the overwhelming number of misguided policies that kick people while they’re down: from asset limits that tell poor people not to save, to employers’ use of criminal records that make it hard for people to find a job even decades after an infraction.

In a rare moment of good news, New York City has decided to remove one of these barriers by limiting the use of credit checks for employment screening . Last month, the City Council voted overwhelmingly to pass the strongest measure in the country on this issue, joining ten states . This measure, which Mayor DeBlasio is expected to sign on Wednesday, is a major step forward to rein in a practice that does little for employers while filtering out good employees who run into financial trouble.

Nearly half of employers check credit histories for at least some positions, according to the Society for Human Resource Management . This means that before receiving a job offer, the employer has the ability to comb through your financial history to see if you’ve paid your bills on time, and can choose not to offer you a job if you haven’t. Of course, if you’re having trouble paying your bills—because of a job loss, an illness, an irregular work schedule, or other risks that working families face—being turned down for a job isn’t going to make it easier to pay your bills or improve your credit. And so the cycle continues.

Meanwhile, credit reporting itself has its limitations. Roughly one in five credit reports contains errors , according to an analysis by the Federal Trade Commission. And the information in credit reports only reflects part of a family’s financial situation—the part that tends to reflect better on upper-income folks. Mortgage payments count toward a positive credit history—very significantly—but on-time rent payments don’t. And when low-income families pay their regular bills on time—such as rent and utilities—this positive information generally doesn’t go on credit reports, even though negative information such as late payments, nonpayments, and collections ultimately does get reported. So even when families are trying hard to pay bills on time, these bills don’t count in the same way credit cards and loan payments do.

That’s slowly starting to change. There are efforts underway to improve credit reporting to more accurately reflect credit risk and help more deserving borrowers get affordable loans, including a recent pilot where thousands of low-income families living in affordable housing were able to have their rental payments applied to their credit reports and scores. But in the meantime, families are needlessly hurt by a system that misuses financial information to make hiring decisions that hurt those who are already struggling.

To be sure, New York City’s law does have some exceptions for jobs in government, law enforcement, certain finance and tech jobs, and jobs where the employee is in charge of major financial decisions. For these jobs, one can argue that the fears of theft cited when credit screening tools are pitched to companies are more legitimate. (When I worked at the Treasury Department, for example, a credit check was required.) But the City’s new law goes well beyond other states where, for example, handling a certain amount of cash could be considered an exception. And it comes close to two bills introduced in the last Congress: one bill by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) limiting credit checks to jobs requiring a security clearance, and a bill by Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) with added exemptions for some government and banking jobs.

The federal government has been catching on as well. Last fall, the US Department of Labor issued new guidance warning employers that the use of credit reports may be discriminatory. Policies designed to screen for people working in high-level positions shouldn’t apply to most jobs, never mind that even Bernie Madoff probably had a stellar credit history for most of his career.

We should follow New York’s example to keep credit reports where they belong—in the financial marketplace—and not as another barrier to hold people back from jobs and financial security because of past decisions or financial distress.

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Temporary Assistance Doesn’t Help Impoverished Married Parents

Marital poverty is a serious, widespread, but mostly unacknowledged problem in the United States. Just over 9.3 million people in married-parent families live below our extremely low official poverty line . Another 6 million people live between the official poverty threshold and 130 percent of the poverty line, which is the income limit for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and only about $26,000 for a married couple with one child.

Despite these staggering numbers, there is widespread denial of the reality of marital poverty. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has gone so far to claim that being “married with kids versus unmarried with kids is the difference between living in poverty and not.” It appears he is unaware there are more married parents living in poverty in his state than never married parents living in poverty.

We know from a vast body of research that poverty and related financial stressors are risk factors for marital conflict, domestic violence, and divorce. And notable recent research by Laura Tach and Kathryn Edin found that economic factors are a more important predictor of dissolution for married parents than for cohabiting ones.

The Temporary Assistance (TANF) program should be playing a central role in helping married families overcome the kinds of economic hardship and other factors that contribute to the high divorce rate among working class families . Under the Temporary Assistance program, states receive funds to provide means-tested, re-employment assistance and other services to struggling unemployed and underemployed parents with low incomes. One of the four purposes of Temporary Assistance is to “encourage the maintenance of two-parent families.”

Despite this mandate, Temporary Assistance is failing struggling, married families. The extent of TANF’s failure is shown in the chart below. Between 2000 and 2012, the number of married parents living in poverty increased 39 percent, but the already extremely low number of married parents being helped by TANF plummeted by 54 percent . In the majority of states today, fewer than 1000 married parents receive Temporary Assistance. In Louisiana, for example, over 50,000 married parents live in poverty, but only about 50 of them receive Temporary Assistance.

Where Temporary Assistance has failed, other better-designed programs have stepped up. In 2014, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) helped 5.2 million low-income children who lived with both of their married parents, and another 1.2 million children who lived with both of their unmarried parents. Unlike Temporary Assistance, SNAP actually responded to the increase in married-parent unemployment and hardship during the Great Recession. Similarly, early evidence suggests that the Affordable Care Act—including Medicaid expansion and the Premium Tax Credit—has increased health insurance coverage among working-class married families.

How can we fix Temporary Assistance so that it doesn’t effectively exclude millions of struggling, married parents from getting the temporary financial help – as well as employment and other services – that could make the difference between staying together and splitting up?

The first and arguably most important step is to acknowledge the extent of the problem of marital poverty and hardship in the United States, and the destructive impact it has on family life.

Then we need to look at models for reforming Temporary Assistance. Most notably, the original version of the Minnesota Family Investment Program (MFIP) that was evaluated in the mid-1990s reduced divorce among participating disadvantaged, two-parent families. The reductions in divorce were particularly large—70 percent—among black married couples. In addition, both MFIP and Milwaukee’s New Hope Project increased rates of marriage among disadvantaged single mothers.

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These progressive demonstration projects ensured that low-income married- and cohabiting-couple families had an adequate income to support themselves while searching for work or addressing issues that limited their work capacity, including through transitional jobs, re-employment, and other services. Unlike the current Temporary Assistance program, these programs did not utilize unreasonably restrictive participation rates or harshly punitive measures that are mostly aimed at reducing the number of people who receive help; instead, these programs emphasized helping parents obtain and maintain stable employment, while meeting their basic needs.

Unfortunately, the current financial structure of Temporary Assistance and the federal law that governs it makes operating rigorously tested programs like the original MFIP or New Hope all but impossible for states. Fixing this should be at the top of the list of reforms that would help struggling, two-parent families. At the very least, the federal government should establish a national Temporary Assistance demonstration project for married and unmarried two-parent families based on the original MFIP program and New Hope. Of course, some policymakers would prefer to just talk about family values, but even in today’s polarized political environment it should be possible to move forward on a concrete initiative like this one that actually values working-class families by helping them stay together.

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By Joe Hasell, Max Roser, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Pablo Arriagada

Global poverty is one of the most pressing problems that the world faces today. The poorest in the world are often undernourished , without access to basic services such as electricity and safe drinking water ; they have less access to education , and suffer from much poorer health .

In order to make progress against such poverty in the future, we need to understand poverty around the world today and how it has changed.

On this page you can find all our data, visualizations and writing relating to poverty. This work aims to help you understand the scale of the problem today; where progress has been achieved and where it has not; what can be done to make progress against poverty in the future; and the methods behind the data on which this knowledge is based.

Key Insights on Poverty

Measuring global poverty in an unequal world.

There is no single definition of poverty. Our understanding of the extent of poverty and how it is changing depends on which definition we have in mind.

In particular, richer and poorer countries set very different poverty lines in order to measure poverty in a way that is informative and relevant to the level of incomes of their citizens.

For instance, while in the United States a person is counted as being in poverty if they live on less than roughly $24.55 per day, in Ethiopia the poverty line is set more than 10 times lower – at $2.04 per day. You can read more about how these comparable national poverty lines are calculated in this footnote. 1

To measure poverty globally, however, we need to apply a poverty line that is consistent across countries.

This is the goal of the International Poverty Line of $2.15 per day – shown in red in the chart – which is set by the World Bank and used by the UN to monitor extreme poverty around the world.

We see that, in global terms, this is an extremely low threshold indeed – set to reflect the poverty lines adopted nationally in the world’s poorest countries. It marks an incredibly low standard of living – a level of income much lower than just the cost of a healthy diet .

From $1.90 to $2.15 a day: the updated International Poverty Line

What you should know about this data.

• Global poverty data relies on national household surveys that have differences affecting their comparability across countries or over time. Here the data for the US relates to incomes and the data for other countries relates to consumption expenditure. 2
• The poverty lines here are an approximation of national definitions of poverty, made in order to allow comparisons across the countries. 1
• Non-market sources of income, including food grown by subsistence farmers for their own consumption, are taken into account. 3
• Data is measured in 2017 international-$, which means that inflation and differences in the cost of living across countries are taken into account. 4

Global extreme poverty declined substantially over the last generation

Over the past generation extreme poverty declined hugely. This is one of the most important ways our world has changed over this time.

There are more than a billion fewer people living below the International Poverty Line of $2.15 per day today than in 1990. On average, the number declined by 47 million every year, or 130,000 people each day. 5

The scale of global poverty today, however, remains vast. The latest global estimates of extreme poverty are for 2019. In that year the World Bank estimates that around 650 million people – roughly one in twelve – were living on less than $2.15 a day.

Extreme poverty: how far have we come, how far do we still have to go?

• Extreme poverty here is defined according to the UN’s definition of living on less than $2.15 a day – an extremely low threshold needed to monitor and draw attention to the living conditions of the poorest around the world. Read more in our article, From $1.90 to $2.15 a day: the updated International Poverty Line .
• Global poverty data relies on national household surveys that have differences affecting their comparability across countries or over time. 2
• Surveys are less frequently available in poorer countries and for earlier decades. To produce regional and global poverty estimates, the World Bank collates the closest survey for each country and projects the data forward or backwards to the year being estimated. 6
• Data is measured in 2017 international-$, which means that inflation and differences in the cost of living across countries are taken into account . 4

The pandemic pushed millions into extreme poverty

Official estimates for global poverty over the course of the Coronavirus pandemic are not yet available.

But it is clear that the global recession it brought about has had a terrible impact on the world’s poorest.

Preliminary estimates produced by researchers at the World Bank suggest that the number of people in extreme poverty rose by around 70 million in 2020 – the first substantial rise in a generation – and remains around 70-90 million higher than would have been expected in the pandemic’s absence. On these preliminary estimates, the global extreme poverty rate rose to around 9% in 2020. 7

• Figures for 2020-2022 are preliminary estimates and projections by World Bank researchers, based on economic growth forecasts. The pre-pandemic projection is based on growth forecasts prior to the pandemic. You can read more about this data and the methods behind it in the World Bank’s Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2022 report. 8

Hundreds of millions will remain in extreme poverty on current trends

Extreme poverty declined during the last generation because the majority of the poorest people on the planet lived in countries with strong economic growth – primarily in Asia.

The majority of the poorest now live in Sub-Saharan Africa, where weaker economic growth and high population growth in many countries has led to a rising number of people living in extreme poverty.

The chart here shows projections of global extreme poverty produced by World Bank researchers based on economic growth forecasts. 9

A very bleak future is ahead of us should such weak economic growth in the world’s poorest countries continue – a future in which extreme poverty is the reality for hundreds of millions for many years to come.

• The extreme poverty estimates and projections shown here relate to 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. You can read more about this change and how it affected the World Bank estimates of poverty in our article From $1.90 to $2.15 a day: the updated International Poverty Line .
• Figures for 2018 and beyond are preliminary estimates and projections by Lakner et al. (2022), based on economic growth forecasts. You can read more about this data and the methods behind it in the related blog post. 10
• Data is measured in 2011 international-$, which means that inflation and differences in the cost of living across countries are taken into account. 4

The rapid progress seen in many countries shows an end to poverty is possible

Each of the countries shown in the chart achieved large declines in extreme poverty over the last generation. 11

The fact that rapid progress against poverty has been achieved in many places is one of the most important lessons we can learn from the available data on extreme poverty.

For those who are not aware of such progress – which is the majority of people – it would be easy to make the mistake of believing that poverty is inevitable and that action to tackle poverty is hence doomed to fail.

The huge progress seen in so many places shows that this view is incorrect.

After 200 years of progress the fight against global poverty is just beginning

Over the past two centuries the world made good progress against extreme poverty. But only very recently has poverty fallen at higher poverty lines.

Global poverty rates at these higher lines remain very high:

• 25% of the world lives on less than $3.65 per day – a poverty line broadly reflective of the lines adopted in lower-middle income countries.
• 47% of the world lives on less than $6.85 per day – a poverty line broadly reflective of the lines adopted in upper-middle income countries.
• 84% live on less than $30 per day – a poverty line broadly reflective of the lines adopted in high income countries. 12

Economic growth over the past two centuries has allowed the majority of the world to leave extreme poverty behind. But by the standards of today’s rich countries, the world remains very poor. If this should change, the world needs to achieve very substantial economic growth further still.

The history of the end of poverty has just begun

How much economic growth is necessary to reduce global poverty substantially?

• The data from 1981 onwards is based on household surveys collated by the World Bank. Earlier figures are from Moatsos (2021), who extends the series backwards based on historical reconstructions of GDP per capita and inequality data. 13
• All data is measured in international-$ which means that inflation and differences in purchasing power across countries are taken into account. 4
• The World Bank data for the higher poverty lines is measured in 2017 international-$. Recently, the World Bank updated its methodology having previously used 2011 international-$ to measure incomes and set poverty lines. The Moatsos (2021) historical series is based on the previously-used World Bank definition of extreme poverty – living on less than $1.90 a day when measured in 2011 international-$. This is broadly equivalent to the current World Bank definition of extreme poverty – living on less than $2.15 a day when measured in 2017 international-$. You can read more about this update to the World Bank’s methodology and how it has affected its estimates of poverty in our article From $1.90 to $2.15 a day: the updated International Poverty Line .
• The global poverty data shown from 1981 onwards relies on national household surveys that have differences affecting their comparability across countries or over time. 2
• Such surveys are less frequently available in poorer countries and for earlier decades. To produce regional and global poverty estimates, the World Bank collates the closest survey for each country and projects the data forward or backwards to the year being estimated. 6
• Non-market sources of income, including food grown by subsistence farmers for their own consumption, are taken into account. This is also true of the historical data – in producing historical estimates of GDP per capita on which these long-run estimates are based, economic historians take into account such non-market sources of income, as we discuss further in our article How do we know the history of extreme poverty?

Explore Data on Poverty

About this data.

All the data included in this explorer is available to download in GitHub , alongside a range of other poverty and inequality metrics.

Where is this data sourced from?

This data explorer is collated and adapted from the World Bank’s Poverty and Inequality Platform (PIP).

The World Bank’s PIP data is a large collection of household surveys where steps have been taken by the World Bank to harmonize definitions and methods across countries and over time.

About the comparability of household surveys

There is no global survey of incomes. To understand how incomes across the world compare, researchers need to rely on available national surveys.

Such surveys are partly designed with cross-country comparability in mind, but because the surveys reflect the circumstances and priorities of individual countries at the time of the survey, there are some important differences.

Income vs expenditure surveys

One important issue is that the survey data included within the PIP database tends to measure people’s income in high-income countries, and people’s consumption expenditure in poorer countries.

The two concepts are closely related: the income of a household equals their consumption plus any saving, or minus any borrowing or spending out of savings.

One important difference is that, while zero consumption is not a feasible value – people with zero consumption would starve – a zero income is a feasible value. This means that, at the bottom end of the distribution, income and consumption can give quite different pictures about a person’s welfare. For instance, a person dissaving in retirement may have a very low, or even zero, income, but have a high level of consumption nevertheless.

The gap between income and consumption is higher at the top of this distribution too, richer households tend to save more, meaning that the gap between income and consumption is higher at the top of this distribution too. Taken together, one implication is that inequality measured in terms of consumption is generally somewhat lower than the inequality measured in terms of income.

In our Data Explorer of this data there is the option to view only income survey data or only consumption survey data, or instead to pool the data available from both types of survey – which yields greater coverage.

Other comparability issues

There are a number of other ways in which comparability across surveys can be limited. The PIP Methodology Handbook provides a good summary of the comparability and data quality issues affecting this data and how it tries to address them.

In collating this survey data the World Bank takes a range of steps to harmonize it where possible, but comparability issues remain. These affect comparisons both across countries and within individual countries over time.

To help communicate the latter, the World Bank produces a variable that groups surveys within each individual country into more comparable ‘spells’. Our Data Explorer provides the option of viewing the data with these breaks in comparability indicated, and these spells are also indicated in our data download .

Global and regional poverty estimates

Along with data for individual countries, the World Bank also provides global and regional poverty estimates which aggregate over the available country data.

Surveys are not conducted annually in every country however – coverage is generally poorer the further back in time you look, and remains particularly patchy within Sub-Saharan Africa. You can see that visualized in our chart of the number of surveys included in the World Bank data by decade.

In order to produce global and regional aggregate estimates for a given year, the World Bank takes the surveys falling closest to that year for each country and ‘lines-up’ the data to the year being estimated by projecting it forwards or backwards.

This lining-up is generally done on the assumption that household incomes or expenditure grow in line with the growth rates observed in national accounts data. You can read more about the interpolation methods used by the World Bank in Chapter 5 of the Poverty and Inequality Platform Methodology Handbook.

How does the data account for inflation and for differences in the cost of living across countries?

To account for inflation and price differences across countries, the World Bank’s data is measured in international dollars. This is a hypothetical currency that results from price adjustments across time and place. It is defined as having the same purchasing power as one US-$ would in the United States in a given base year. One int.-$ buys the same quantity of goods and services no matter where or when it is spent.

There are many challenges to making such adjustments and they are far from perfect. Angus Deaton ( Deaton, 2010 ) provides a good discussion of the difficulties involved in price adjustments and how this relates to global poverty measurement.

But in a world where price differences across countries and over time are large it is important to attempt to account for these differences as well as possible, and this is what these adjustments do.

In September 2022, the World Bank updated its methodology, and now uses international-$ expressed in 2017 prices – updated from 2011 prices. This has had little effect on our overall understanding of poverty and inequality around the world. But poverty estimates for particular countries vary somewhat between the old and updated methodology. You can read more about this update in our article From $1.90 to $2.15 a day: the updated International Poverty Line .

To allow for comparisons with the official data now expressed in 2017 international-$ data, the World Bank continues to release its poverty and inequality data expressed in 2011 international-$ as well. We have built a Data Explorer to allow you to compare these, and we make all figures available in terms of both sets of prices in our data download .

Absolute vs relative poverty lines

This dataset provides poverty estimates for a range of absolute and relative poverty lines.

An absolute poverty line represents a fixed standard of living; a threshold that is held constant across time. Within the World Bank’s poverty data, absolute poverty lines also aim to represent a standard of living that is fixed across countries (by converting local currencies to international-$). The International Poverty Line of $2.15 per day (in 2017 international-$) is the best known absolute poverty line and is used by the World Bank and the UN to measure extreme poverty around the world.

The value of relative poverty lines instead rises and falls as average incomes change within a given country. In most cases they are set at a certain fraction of the median income. Because of this, relative poverty can be considered a metric of inequality – it measures how spread out the bottom half of the income distribution is.

The idea behind measuring poverty in relative terms is that a person’s well-being depends not on their own absolute standard of living but on how that standard compares with some reference group, or whether it enables them to participate in the norms and customs of their society. For instance, joining a friend’s birthday celebration without shame might require more resources in a rich society if the norm is to go for an expensive meal out, or give costly presents.

Our dataset includes three commonly-used relative poverty lines: 40%, 50%, and 60% of the median.

Such lines are most commonly used in rich countries, and are the main way poverty is measured by the OECD and the European Union .More recently, relative poverty measures have come to be applied in a global context. The share of people living below 50 per cent of median income is, for instance, one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal indicators . And the World Bank now produces estimates of global poverty using a Societal Poverty Line that combines absolute and relative components.

When comparing relative poverty rates around the world, however, it is important to keep in mind that – since average incomes are so far apart – such relative poverty lines relate to very different standards of living in rich and poor countries.

Does the data account for non-market income, such as food grown by subsistence farmers?

Many poor people today, as in the past, rely on subsistence farming rather than a monetary income gained from selling goods or their labor on the market. 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.

Research & Writing

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Interactive charts on poverty.

Official definitions of poverty in different countries are often not directly comparable due to the different ways poverty is measured. For example, countries account for the size of households in different ways in their poverty measures.

The poverty lines shown here are an approximation of national definitions, harmonized to allow for comparisons across countries. For all countries apart from the US, we take the harmonized poverty line calculated by Jolliffe et al. (2022). These lines are calculated as the international dollar figure which, in the World Bank’s Poverty and Inequality Platform (PIP) data, yields the same poverty rate as the officially reported rate using national definitions in a particular year (around 2017).

For the US, Jolliffe et al. (2022) use the OECD’s published poverty rate – which is measured against a relative poverty line of 50% of the median income. This yields a poverty line of $34.79 (measured using 2017 survey data). This however is not the official definition of poverty adopted in the US. We calculated an alternative harmonized figure for the US national poverty using the same method as Jolliffe et al. (2022), but based instead on the official 2019 poverty rate – as reported by the U.S. Census Bureau.

You can see in detail how we calculated this poverty line in this Google Colabs notebook .

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 .

Because there is no global survey of incomes, researchers need to rely on available national surveys. Such surveys are designed with cross-country comparability in mind, but because the surveys reflect the circumstances and priorities of individual countries at the time of the survey, there are some important differences. In collating this survey data the World Bank takes steps to harmonize it where possible, but comparability issues remain.

One important issue is that, whilst in most high-income countries the surveys capture people’s incomes, in poorer countries these surveys tend to capture people’s consumption. The two concepts are closely related: the income of a household equals their consumption plus any saving, or minus any borrowing or spending out of savings.

To help communicate the latter, the World Bank produces a variable that groups surveys within each individual country into more comparable ‘spells’ (which we include in our data download ). Our Data Explorer provides the option of viewing the data with these breaks in comparability indicated.

The international-$ is a hypothetical currency that results from price adjustments across time and place. It is defined as having the same purchasing power as one US-$ in a given base year – in this case 2017. One int.-$ buys the same quantity of goods and services no matter where or when it is spent. There are many challenges to making such adjustments and they are far from perfect. But in a world where price differences across countries and over time are large it is important to attempt to account for these differences as well as possible, and this is what these adjustments do. Read more in our article From $1.90 to $2.15 a day: the updated International Poverty Line .

​​According to World Bank data, in 1990 there were 2.00 billion people living in poverty, and in 2019 that had fallen to 0.648 billion. The average fall over the 29 years in between is: (2.00 billion – 0.648 billion)/29 = 46.6 million. Dividing by the number of days (29 x 365) gives the average daily fall: (2.00 billion – 0.648 billion)/(29 x 365) = 128,000. (All figures rounded to 3 significant figures).

The projections are generally made on the assumption that incomes or expenditure grow in line with the growth rates observed in national accounts data. You can read more about the interpolation methods used by the World Bank in Chapter 5 of the Poverty and Inequality Platform Methodology Handbook.

We use the figures presented in the World Bank’s Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2022 report. Earlier estimates were also published in Lakner, C., Mahler, D.G., Negre, M. et al. How much does reducing inequality matter for global poverty?. J Econ Inequal (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10888-021-09510-w . Available online here .

Earlier estimates were also published in Lakner, C., Mahler, D.G., Negre, M. et al. How much does reducing inequality matter for global poverty?. J Econ Inequal (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10888-021-09510-w . Available online here .

The figures are taken from a World Bank blog post by Nishant Yonzan, Christoph Lakner and Daniel Gerszon Mahler. The post builds on and updates the estimates published by Lakner et al. (2022).In September 2022, the World Bank changed from using 2011 international-$ to 2017 international-$ in the measurement of global poverty. The International Poverty Line used by the World Bank and the UN to define extreme poverty was accordingly updated from $1.90 a day (in 2011 prices) to $2.15 (in 2017 prices).In order to match up to the projected figures, the extreme poverty estimates shown here relate to a previous release of the World Bank’s data using data expressed in 2011 prices, which vary slightly from the latest data in 2017 prices. You can read more about this change and how it affected the World Bank estimates of poverty in our article From $1.90 to $2.15 a day: the updated International Poverty Line .Lakner, C., Mahler, D.G., Negre, M. et al. How much does reducing inequality matter for global poverty?. J Econ Inequal (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10888-021-09510-w . Available online here .

We use the figures provided in the blog post, which extend the methods presented in Lakner et al. (2022).Lakner, C., Mahler, D.G., Negre, M. et al. How much does reducing inequality matter for global poverty?. J Econ Inequal (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10888-021-09510-w . Available online here .

Shown are those countries with a decline of more than 30 percentage points over a period of 15 years or more.There are a number of ways in which comparability across the different household surveys on which this data is based can be limited. These affect comparisons both across countries and within individual countries over time.The World Bank’s Poverty and Inequality Platform Methodology Handbook provides a good summary of the comparability and data quality issues affecting this data and how it tries to address them. In collating this survey data the World Bank takes a range of steps to harmonize it where possible, but comparability issues remain. To help communicate the latter, the World Bank produces a variable that groups surveys within each individual country into more comparable ‘spells’. Our Data Explorer provides the option of viewing the data with these breaks in comparability indicated.

You can read more about how the World Bank sets these higher poverty lines, as well as the International Poverty Line against which it measures extreme poverty, in our article From $1.90 to $2.15 a day: the updated International Poverty Line . To the three poverty lines adopted officially by the World Bank – $2.15, $3.65 and $6.85 – we add a higher line broadly consistent with definitions of poverty in high income countries. See our article 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?

For details of the methods used to produce the long-run poverty data see, Moatsos, M. (2021). Global extreme poverty: Present and past since 1820. In van Zanden, Rijpma, Malinowski and Mira d’Ercole (eds.) How Was Life? Volume II: New Perspectives on Well-Being and Global Inequality since 1820. Available from the OECD here .

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'The Line' Documentary Shows Families In Poverty Across U.S.

CAVANAUGH: This is the time of year when we are all asked to think of those less fortunate, from Salvation Army red kettles to holiday toy drives. We're asked to spread our good fortune to others. Now policy makers in Washington are being asked to do their part. San Diego groups are sponsoring the screening of a documentary which pushes for more federal help for the poor, and the passage of a crucial farm bill before the end of the year. My guests, Jennifer Tracy is executive director of the San Diego hunger coalition. Welcome back to the show. TRACY: Thanks, Maureen. CAVANAUGH: And Hannah Gravette is a community organizer at the San Diego organizing project. Welcome to the show. GRAVETTE: Great to be here. CAVANAUGH: Timothy King is on the line with us. Executive producer of the documentary I was talking about, it's called The Line. KING: Thanks for having me. CAVANAUGH: Here's a man explaining what The Line means in a clip from your documentary. NEW SPEAKER: The Line is the firing line at which people face survival or death. And sometimes the person holding the gun is their neighbor, and sometimes it's their Congressman or their alderman who's not doing enough to help them. CAVANAUGH: Another woman talks about The Line as the one poor people want to rise up to and middle class people don't want to fall below. Can you talk more about this idea of The Line and why it's so significant in American society? KING: Yeah, one thing that we realized when we first started thinking about creating this film is that people so often don't understand what poverty in America looks like today, especially since the recession started. The face of poverty in America hasn't come out for a lot of people. There's a lot of stereotypes or old stories or kind of ways of thinking about poverty that people have. And our hope with this film was to bring out the real faces, the real voices, and the real stories of people who are struggling to get by. When it comes to poverty in America, one of the things that we see is it's a lack of opportunity and a lack of freedom for people to live as they want. And we wanted to make sure that there was a way that people could engage with the stories of folks, some people who look like them, who might not look like them or have the same background, but that they could see the different ways that Americans are struggling every day to stay up and above and beyond that line, and oftentimes continuing to fall beneath it. CAVANAUGH: Now, you focus in The Line, the documentary, on four people living in poverty. Tell me in what ways their stories challenge assumptions about poor people. KING: So often you hear people who think that those who are living in poverty almost want to live in poverty or that the only reason why someone is poor in America is because they aren't working hard enough or they aren't trying hard enough or it's their own fault through bad choices. But you know what? In life all of us make mistakes and bad choices, but often what we see with folks living in poverty today are those who have been hit by some circumstances often beyond their control. Sometimes 1 story was a woman who had worked herself out of poverty but then tripped and fell down the stairs at a train platform and became disabled. Another man who had gone to a great school, had done well on his SATs, making six figures a year, and suddenly found himself a victim of the recession. Other folks, and I think one being a lot of people relate to, is that the economy changes. And the livelihood you used to have, what you trained for, what you were best at no longer exists. And so one of the things that we really wanted to show is that you know what? It's a tough thing, but poverty can happen to anyone in America. And that's why we need to be good neighbors to one another and we need to make sure that we support the charities and organizations that help folk when is they're down on their luck but also make sure that we support the government programs that give people that safety net and that bounceback that they need. CAVANAUGH: Now, you have actually sent copies of The Line documentary to every member of Congress. What is the message that you want congressmen and senators to understand from this film and what would you like them to do about it? GRAVETTE: Right now in DC, there's a big partisan showdown around the budget. And one of the things that we're worried about is that we know that business people, they're got their lobbyists on the hill who are making sure that their interests are taken care of when we look at our budget and when we talk about how to reduce our deficits. We know that wealthy people are making their donations and that people are looking out for their interests. And what we're worried about is that when all of these other interests kind of stake their claim and are fighting for their piece of the pie that what ends up happening is when Congress tries to reduce our deficit, which is an important thing to try to do that over the long run, the people who end up paying the price are those who can least afford T. It's the poor, the vulnerable, hardworking but struggling families who don't have a voice right now in DC. And because they don't want have a voice, they're the ones who could end up bearing the burden of deficit reduction. So one of the things that we've asked is before any member of Congress goes and votes on any deal around this fiscal cliff, before they look at any deal for deficit reduction that they watch this film and they hear the stories and they know that these are real people, real lives, real struggles. And that they need to remember those faces, those names, and those stories before they vote on anything. So we've made it available to every member of Congress, and it's up on the movies website, thelinemovie.com. CAVANAUGH: Thanks for joining us, KING: Thanks so much for having me. CAVANAUGH: Jennifer, the stories told in The Line are about people in Illinois, they're in North Carolina, they're in Louisiana. Why did you want to bring this film to San Diego? TRACY: We have about half a million people in San Diego County who struggle to get enough food to eat each year. We have a poverty rate of about 14%, and our child poverty rate is about 19.5%. So about 1-5 children in San Diego live in poverty. And we wanted to make sure that we could have a way to move forward the conversation about poverty. It's one of the main factors that affects hunger. CAVANAUGH: So you've given us numbers, and I'm glad that you did. Those numbers are very important. But is it that a movie like this puts a face on those numbers? TRACY: Exactly. For people who've never experienced poverty or hunger or never had to ask for help, it's a better opportunity to better understand the issue. And the hope is that the increased understanding will improve the public dialogue about poverty and help us find better solutions to address the problem. CAVANAUGH: These stories are all very compelling. Was there 1 story in the four people profiled in The Line that really resonated with you? TRACY: Yeah, the man who was a single father who had lost his job working at a bank resonated with me a lot. When I was younger, my dad would lose his job seasonally with the work that he was in. So we relied on programs like these to help make sure we had enough to eat. So knowing that that can happen to anyone and that people work really, really hard and still fall on hard times, that story in particular I could see how that made sense. CAVANAUGH: And that man talks about his falling from grace, so to speak, having this huge income, and then going have to go and get food for his family, the kids don't understand that -- they're not getting it. Did you get it when you were younger and your dad had to go through that? TRACY: I knew that we were low income, and I knew that we couldn't afford a lot of things. But luckily I never went hungry because we had access to the food stamp program, we received reduced price meals at school, and we also received help frommure on church. So it made a big difference for us. CAVANAUGH: Hannah, what story in the film represents a personal history that you know about here in San Diego? GRAVETTE: I think for me it was -- the woman who had worked her way out of poverty and then fell downthe steps and was struggling again to find and keep work. And it makes me think about a woman that I know here in San Diego, a very similar story. She grew up in poverty. She grew up in a family where both her parents were working very hard to make ends meet, and they just weren't able to provide the same level that other families in San Diego are able to provide for their children. But she did manage through some government grants and other types of support to go to college and get a good job. And she also came down with a health problem, and because of her condition wasn't able to work and keep that job, and now has $16,000 worth of medical bills that she's really struggling under. She'll probably never be able to crawl back out of that hole without some kind of help. CAVANAUGH: And again, somebody who was in a situation where they were making progress in their lives, doing great, just one fall, just one accident, just one bad move, and they find themselves in a situation where they are now one of the statistics that you were talking about. I'm wondering, Jennifer, I know that the San Diego hunger coalition has been working with San Diego County to improve the food stamp process here in San Diego. How has that been going? TRACY: Well, we had to start from a low level. So we've been working our way up to improve access. So we have increased participation in other program, there's more people enrolled who are eligible. And I know the county of San Diego is working really, really hard to improve efficiency and the effectiveness of their eligibility system. But there's still work to do. There's still things that are systemically happening that are barriers for people. And we'd still like to see some of the stigmas addressed within the system as well that are related to low-income people. CAVANAUGH: In your working the idea of improving the amount of participation in food stamps is seen as a victory. But I remember back during the campaign, are the fact that the food stamp assistance had gone up under President Obama was used as an issue against him. I'd like you both to address this. Is that part of a particular attitude interest poverty do you think? TRACY: I think it's a stigma that people have alternatives. It's the assumption that low-people choose to be poor, or if they just got a job, they'd being okay. But the reality is we had a significant recession. The program is counter cyclical. So it's going to automatically expand as people need help, and it will automatically contract as the economy improves. The most common reason people leave the program is because they find work. So a lot of the things that were said in the campaigns were really based on stigmas and stereotypes that simply aren't true. CAVANAUGH: And Hannah, a lot of people believe the government cannot afford to help people who need assistance like this: At least not all of them, and that people just have to pick themselves up and go to work and fend for themselves. GRAVETTE: Well, and I think to that I would say that we also simply cannot afford to let people live in poverty because it's a symptom that will impact everybody. It impacts every level of our economy, every level of our society, of our social life. And I do think even our local county, they're dependent. They distribute resources that actually come from the federal government or from the state. And right now, and Mr. King talked about this a little bit when he was speaking, that even right now our federal government are debating whether or not we should solve our country's deficit simply by making cuts to programs that really impact these people we're talking about, people living in poverty. Our neighbors, our family members. And we need to make a decision. Our country needs to make a decision right now. Do we want to solve our nation's deficit only by asking all of these people to suffer more? Or do we want to ask everybody to contribute and pay their fair share to solve this problem? CAVANAUGH: Tell us about, Hannah if you would, what would be the impact here in San Diego if indeed this budget is approved that solves the problem by cutting social programs or if the farm bill is not approved by Congress by the end of the year. GRAVETTE: Well, so the house budget, there will still be more compromise, but the house budget that has been passed, they would like particularly with food stamps in the country they want to cut 8-10 million families from food stamps. I do have numbers here locally, in California for Medicaid or Medi-Cal, the healthcare program that many of these approximate families depend on, there would be 11.1 million people that would be cut from those programs. And when people don't have access to healthcare, it's something that all of us in the long run do actually end up having to pay for. So we can't afford to make these cuts. We simply can't. CAVANAUGH: Jennifer, what are you hoping will be the result of this screening? Why is this coming to San Diego? TRACY: I'd like them to start talking to the people they care about about these issues. And when they hear stereotypes, that they make an effort to better understand what the reality is. I think it's time we elevate the dialogue above stereotypes and start talking about real people and real solutions. When you have access to food, you're more likely to be stable enough, to go find work instead of waiting in a food line for three hours. Hunger costs us over $90 billion every year. So we'd like to have this be more of the public dialogue to find strong solutions. CAVANAUGH: You want people to get involved with their member of Congress? TRACY: Calling their congressional representative would be a really big step to, make sure they hear the voices of people. We know that Americans support making sure people have access to food. So we'd like to see those sentiments reflected in the actions of Congress.

This is the time of year when we are all asked to think of those less fortunate. From Salvation Army red kettles to holiday toy drives, we're asked to spread our good fortune to others.

Now, policymakers in Washington are being asked to do their part. San Diego groups are sponsoring the screening of a documentary that pushes for more federal help for the poor and the passage of a crucial farm bill before the end of the year.

The documentary "The Line" shares the stories of four individuals who live at or below the poverty line. One is a man who lost his job at a bank and is struggling to get by in an Illinois suburb. Another woman runs a nonprofit aimed at eliminating the trauma of poverty and poverty-related violence after seeing her sister get shot and killed in Chicago's west side.

"We wanted to make sure that there was a way that people could engage with the stories of the folks - some who look like them and some who might not look like them - that they could see the different ways that Americans are struggling every day to stay up and above that line and often continue to fall below it," said Tim King, executive producer of "The Line."

King sent a copy of the documentary to every member of Congress, who are embroiled in budget negotiations that threaten to cut funding for food stamps and Medicaid. The farm bill proposed by the House would cut 8 to 10 million families from food stamps, according to Jennifer Tracy, executive director of the San Diego Hunger Coalition. And if Congress fails to find a compromise on the bill, grocery prices could rise.

"We know that business people, they've got their lobbyists on the hill that make sure their interests are taken care of. We know that wealthy people are making their donations and that people are looking out for them," King said. "When Congress tries to reduce our deficit, the people that end up paying the price are the people who can least afford it."

The San Diego Hunger Coalition , San Diego Organizing Project and other groups are screening "The Line" at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at 4227 Fairmount Avenue in City Heights in an effort to boost advocacy for the poor, especially in San Diego.

Tracy said one in five children in the county live in poverty and about 500,000 households struggle to put food on the table.

"I'd like them to start talking to the people they care about about these issues," Tracy said. "I think it's time to elevate the dialogue about poverty above stereotypes and start talking about real people and real solutions."

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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.

This Blog Includes:

Essay on poverty in 100 words, essay on poverty in 200 words, reasons behind poverty, world poverty conditions, role of ngos to eradicate poverty, what can be done by us.

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

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. 

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. 

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. 

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.

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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Key facts about asian americans living in poverty.

Asian Americans are often portrayed as educationally and financially successful when compared with other racial or ethnic groups. However, Asian origin groups in the United States vary widely in their economic status and education level . Indeed, more than 2.3 million Asian Americans – about one-in-ten – lived in poverty in 2022, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.

Learn more about Asian Americans’ experiences with economic hardship in  our data essay  and  short film .

Here are nine facts about Asian Americans living in poverty.

Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to better understand the characteristics, experiences and views of Asian Americans living in poverty today. It is part of a three-part study that includes an analysis of 18 focus groups conducted with 144 Asians living with economic hardship completed in February 2023 and a short film about Asian families who have experienced economic hardship .

This analysis is based on two main data sources. The first data source is the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2022 American Community Survey (ACS) provided through Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) from the University of Minnesota. In this analysis, poverty status is determined using the 2022 federal poverty line for the 48 contiguous states and the District of Columbia, Alaska, or Hawaii, depending on respondents’ state of residence, published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. For example, a family of four living in 48 contiguous states and the District of Columbia were categorized as living “in poverty” if they make a yearly income of $27,750 or less.

The second data source is Pew Research Center’s 2022-23 survey of Asian American adults, conducted from July 2022 to January 2023 in six languages among 7,006 respondents. The survey analysis included 561 Asian adults whose approximate family income is at or below the 2022 federal poverty line for the 48 contiguous states and the District of Columbia, regardless of their state of residence. For more details, refer to the survey methodology . For questions used in this analysis, refer to the topline questionnaire .

Pew Research Center is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts, its primary funder. The Center’s Asian American portfolio was funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, with generous support from The Asian American Foundation; Chan Zuckerberg Initiative DAF, an advised fund of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation; the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; the Henry Luce Foundation; the Doris Duke Foundation; The Wallace H. Coulter Foundation; The Dirk and Charlene Kabcenell Foundation; The Long Family Foundation; Lu-Hebert Fund; Gee Family Foundation; Joseph Cotchett; the Julian Abdey and Sabrina Moyle Charitable Fund; and Nanci Nishimura.

We would also like to thank the Leaders Forum for its thoughtful leadership and valuable assistance in helping make this survey possible.

The strategic communications campaign used to promote the research was made possible with generous support from the Doris Duke Foundation.

The terms Asians and Asian Americans  are used interchangeably throughout this post to refer to individuals who self-identify as Asian, either alone or in combination with other races or Hispanic identity.

The terms living in poverty and living near or below the federal poverty line are used interchangeably throughout this post to refer to those whose family income is close to or below the 2022 federal poverty line.

• For results on Asian adults from the survey , this refers to adults whose approximate family income falls at or below 100% of the federal poverty line.
• For data on the total U.S. Asian population from the U.S. Census Bureau , this refers to all Asian Americans whose family income is at or below 100% of the federal poverty line.

The term U.S. born refers to people who are U.S. citizens at birth, including people born in the 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, or other U.S. territories, as well as those born elsewhere to at least one parent who is a U.S. citizen.

The term immigrants , when referring to Census Bureau data, includes those who were not U.S. citizens at birth – in other words, those born outside the 50 U.S. states or the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, or other U.S. territories to parents who were not U.S. citizens. When referring to survey respondents, this group only includes those born outside the 50 U.S. States or the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico or other U.S. territories.

About 10% of Asian Americans overall live in poverty, but poverty rates vary widely across origin groups. Burmese (19%) and Hmong Americans (17%) were among the Asian origin groups with the highest poverty rates in 2022. Meanwhile, Filipino (7%) and Indian Americans (6%) were among the groups with the lowest poverty rates.

A third of Asian Americans ages 25 and older who live in poverty have a bachelor’s degree. By comparison, among non-Asians 25 and older who live in poverty, only 14% have a bachelor’s degree.

Asian Americans 25 and older with at least a bachelor’s degree are still less likely to live in poverty (5%) than those with less formal education (13%).

Nearly six-in-ten Asian Americans who live in poverty are immigrants. And relatively few of these immigrants speak English proficiently.

Among Asian immigrants ages 5 and older living below the poverty line, 44% are proficient in English (meaning they either speak only English or speak the language very well). By comparison, 61% of those immigrants above the poverty line speak English proficiently.

About 1 million Asians who are below the poverty line live in 10 U.S. metropolitan areas. In fact, more than 500,000 live in just three metropolitan areas: New York City, Los Angeles and San Francisco. These metro areas each have about 100,000 or more Asians living in poverty, and together they hold 26% of all Asian Americans living in poverty.

Fresno, California (19%), Buffalo, New York (18%) and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (15%) are among the metro areas with the highest poverty rates among Asian Americans. Still, Asian Americans who live in poverty largely reside in places with larger Asian populations than these metro areas.

Refer to a downloadable spreadsheet for detailed data on the number and share of Asians living in poverty by metro area.

Around eight-in-ten Asian adults who live in poverty (79%) have experienced financial challenges in some way in the past 12 months, according to a Pew Research Center survey of Asian adults conducted in 2022 and 2023. By contrast, 48% of Asian adults living above the poverty line say they have experienced the same. Among the specific financial challenges they faced:

• 57% of Asian adults living in poverty were unable to save for emergencies, compared with 40% of Asian adults living above the poverty line.
• 42% had trouble paying their bills, more than twice the share of Asian adults living above the poverty line who said the same (17%).
• 38% have gotten food from a food bank or charitable organization, about six times the share among Asians living above the poverty line (6%).

Financial difficulties tend to come in bundles: Among those living in poverty who say they experienced at least one of the financial challenges asked about, 65% experienced two or more.

A majority of Asian adults who live in poverty (61%) have turned to family or friends for help with bills, housing, food or employment.

A large share (49%) also say they have sought help from local, state or federal governments. Smaller shares have sought help from religious institutions such as churches or temples (21%) or Asian community groups (13%).

However, 19% of Asian adults living in poverty say they have not sought help from any of the sources asked about in the survey.

Why Asian immigrants came to the U.S. is linked to whether they have received help from the government. For example, a third of all Asian immigrants, regardless of poverty status, who came to the U.S. due to conflict or persecution in their home country have received help with bills, housing, food or employment from governments (33%). By comparison, smaller shares of Asian immigrants who came for educational opportunities (14%) or economic opportunities (16%) or who migrated to be with family (25%) say the same.

Roughly half of Asian Americans who live in poverty (47%) say the American dream is out of reach, but others say they have achieved it (15%) or are on their way to achieving it (36%). By comparison, Asians living above the poverty line are more optimistic about their chances of achieving the American dream: 26% say it is out of reach for them, while 27% say they have achieved it and 46% say they are on their way to achieving it.

Asian adults who live below the poverty line and those who live above it have similar views on what’s important to achieving the American dream. For Asians living in poverty, the vast majority say having freedom of choice in how to live one’s life (91%), a good family life (91%), children having the best opportunities (91%) and retiring comfortably (90%) are important to their view of the American dream. Among Asian adults living above the poverty line, similar shares say these elements are important.

Homeownership is also seen as key: 81% of Asian adults living in poverty and 87% of those living above the poverty line say owning a home is important to their view of the American dream. However, Asian adults in poverty are much less likely than those above the poverty line to be homeowners (40% vs. 71%), according to Census Bureau data.

Note: For more details, refer to the survey methodology . For questions used in this analysis, refer to the topline questionnaire .

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About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

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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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Ielts writing task 2 sample 344 - what are some of the reasons for poverty, ielts writing task 2/ ielts essay:, every country has poor people and every country has different ways of dealing with the poor. what are some of the reasons for poverty what can we do to help the poor.

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In many countries today, there are people living in poverty. Why is this the case? What can be done to solve this problem?

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Writing9 with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Fully explain your ideas

To get an excellent score in the IELTS Task 2 writing section, one of the easiest and most effective tips is structuring your writing in the most solid format. A great argument essay structure may be divided to four paragraphs, in which comprises of four sentences (excluding the conclusion paragraph, which comprises of three sentences).

For we to consider an essay structure a great one, it should be looking like this:

• Paragraph 1 - Introduction
• Sentence 1 - Background statement
• Sentence 2 - Detailed background statement
• Sentence 3 - Thesis
• Sentence 4 - Outline sentence
• Paragraph 2 - First supporting paragraph
• Sentence 1 - Topic sentence
• Sentence 2 - Example
• Sentence 3 - Discussion
• Sentence 4 - Conclusion
• Paragraph 3 - Second supporting paragraph
• Paragraph 4 - Conclusion
• Sentence 1 - Summary
• Sentence 2 - Restatement of thesis
• Sentence 3 - Prediction or recommendation

Our recommended essay structure above comprises of fifteen (15) sentences, which will make your essay approximately 250 to 275 words.

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Some people say that music is a good way of bringing people of different cultures and ages together To what extent do you agree or disagree with this opinion

Advantages and disadvantages of watching tv give your opinion, some countries allow old people to work to any age that they want. do the advantages outweigh disadvantages, the plans below show the layout of a university sports centre now, and how it will look after redevelopment. summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant., some people believe that culture will be ruined if it is used to earn tourism revenue, but others consider that tourism is the only way of protecting culture. dicuss both sides and give your opinion..

March 2024 global poverty update from the World Bank: first estimates of global poverty until 2022 from survey data

R. andres castaneda aguilar, carolina diaz-bonilla, christoph lakner, minh cong nguyen, martha viveros, samuel kofi tetteh baah.

Global poverty estimates were updated today on the Poverty and Inequality Platform (PIP).   As explained in more detail in the What’s New document, more than 100 new surveys were added to the PIP database, bringing the total number of surveys to more than 2,300. With more recent survey data, this March 2024 PIP update is the first to report a global poverty number for 2020-2022, the period of the COVID-19 pandemic. We estimate that COVID-19 increased extreme poverty in the world, as measured by the international poverty line of $2.15, from 8.9 percent in 2019 to 9.7 percent in 2020 (see Figure 1). This is the first increase in global poverty in decades. It is in line with earlier estimates of the COVID-19 impact which used limited survey data and GDP growth projections.  The global increase in extreme poverty in 2020 is driven by South Asia, where extreme poverty increased by 2.4 percentage points to 13 percent between 2019 and 2020. In Latin America and the Caribbean, however, extreme poverty continued to decline in 2020, which is driven by Brazil. This can be explained by the role of fiscal policy in mitigating the economic impacts of the COVID-19 shock . At a higher poverty line of $3.65 ( the poverty line more relevant for assessing poverty in lower-middle-income countries ), poverty also fell in Latin America and the Caribbean and in East Asia and the Pacific even in 2020. At $6.85 ( the poverty line more relevant for assessing poverty in upper-middle-income countries ), poverty also declined in 2020 in Europe and Central Asia and in advanced countries (“Other High Income”). Unfortunately, survey coverage during the post-2019 period is still limited in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and North Africa, so we cannot report poverty estimates beyond 2019 for these regions. 

Figure 1: Global and regional poverty estimates, 1990 - 2022

Following the widespread recession in 2020, economies around the world started to recover in 2021 and extreme poverty levels were lower than pre-pandemic levels in the more prosperous regions of the world by 2022 (East Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, advanced countries, Europe and Central Asia, and South Asia). For the world, however, global poverty was still marginally above pre-pandemic levels by 2022, though on a declining trend.  The new estimates of extreme poverty in the world in the period 2020-2022 are quite similar to earlier projections.   An estimated 23 million more people were living in extreme poverty in 2022, compared to 2019. That extreme poverty levels were lower in 2022 relative to 2019 for more prosperous regions, but not for the world, suggests that the economic recovery from the pandemic was uneven and slower for Sub-Saharan Africa where more than half of the extreme poor live. The year 2022 also came with another global shock – Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which contributed to rising inflation in low-, middle- and high-income countries. At the $3.65 and $6.85 poverty lines, the global poverty rate in 2022 are lower the levels recorded in 2019. This result is consistent with the recovery being faster in more prosperous regions, considering that Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for a smaller share of the global poor at these higher lines compared to the extreme poverty line. This March 2024 global poverty update from the World Bank incorporates updated CPI, national accounts and population data, and revises previously published global and regional estimates from 1981 to 2022. The methodology used for lining up regional and global poverty has also been revised, which leads to small changes. For more details, see the What’s New document. Figure 1 shows global and regional poverty trends at all three global absolute poverty lines of the World Bank (see the poverty series using 2011 PPPs here ). Table 1 summarizes the revisions to the regional and global poverty estimates between the September 2023 data vintage and the March 2024 data vintage for the 2019 reference year at all three poverty lines.

Table 1: Poverty estimates for reference year 2019, changes between the September 2023 and March 2024 PIP vintages

Given all the new data points and revisions to PIP data and methodology in this update, global extreme poverty in 2019 has been revised down marginally by 0.1 percentage points to 8.9 percent, resulting in a downward revision in the number of poor people from 701 to 689 million. The global reduction in the millions of extreme poor occurs despite an upward revision in Sub-Saharan Africa (14 million). The reduction is driven by Europe and Central Asia and the Middle East and North Africa, where new survey data have recently become available to replace extrapolations of very old surveys (the regional estimate for Middle East and North Africa cannot be shown since it does not meet the 50% population cut-off.) For example, new survey data for 2022 have been added for Syria and Uzbekistan, for which the latest surveys were 2003 in the previous vintage of the data. At $3.65 and $6.85, poverty rates have been revised down by 0.7 and 0.6 percentage points, representing a reduction in global poverty counts by 52 and 44 million, respectively. These downward revisions in global poverty estimates at these higher poverty thresholds are driven by Europe and Central Asia and South Asia. For more details on the March 2024 PIP update from the World Bank, see the What’s New document.

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The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the UK Government through the Data and Evidence for Tackling Extreme Poverty (DEEP) Research Program.

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Band 4+: In many countries today, there are people living on or below the poverty line. Why is this the case? what can be done to solve this problem?

In today’s contemporary era, it is undoubtedly true that many people are living below the poverty line in different countries. This problem is not only in developed or underdeveloped nations but also in an industrialised state which has now taken the shape of burning issue caused by countless adverse effect universally. In this treatise,I intend to explore the sources of this plight as well as some viable solution to it.

First of all, the most predominant reason is that a large number of unemployment in various territory. However, the maintain the stance that If a general people do not have any job and other work source, it may difficult for them to survive. As a result of this numerous children’s become unable to get a education. I believe that a gaining academic is one of the significant panacea to live a better life and comeout from poor living standard. Furthermore, in some State, folk do not get a equal opportunities than other and government also responsible for this obstacle.To exemplify, in this current era,in the field of education who have wealthy, they booked their seat after giving more money due to this who are from a middle class family they can not gain right to study in a highest facilities provided university or school.

On the other hand,there are some solution can be adopted to improve this situation. First and foremost importantly , authorities should render all equal rights to layman. One of the most significant and advisable resolution for preventing the outcomes on the world is that if region decrease the text which they take from who belong to property line So I think that this issue can be controlled. Apart from this, administrative should provide a free education to all young people and they need to do a collapsation in unemployment rate and also, they should build new factory and firms which can make possibility to give employment to each individual.

In recapitulation, plethora, effective measures can be taken to outcome this issue.Additionally, increase the property line it may be more serious issue for various countries but there are some solution for it which necessary to follow.

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In the fight against crime, police forces and governments are increasingly using security cameras in public places. Some people are opposed to this, saying that it invades our privacy.Discuss both these views and finally give your opinion.

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Living Below the Poverty Line: The African Crisis - Essay Sample

Introduction.

World Bank defines an international to poverty line to those who spend less than $ 1.25 in a day, thus living at an edge of existence. Africa is the leading frontier in the world, with a high rate of poverty. Currently, 422 million people in Africa live below the global poverty line. This number represents more than70% of the poorest people in the world. Various indicators have been used by the United Nations Development Program to measure poverty both in Africa and in other parts of the world ("On the poorest continent, the plight of children is dramatic," 2020). These indicators are; life expectancy during birth, average attendance of school, expected period in attending schools as well as per capita income. In Africa, both poverty and education are closely related since the people who cannot write and read have few chances of securing skilled jobs to build their lives.

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A Discussion of Results and Conclusions of Previous Research Projects

Hyden (2007), Investigated the relationship between poverty and hunger. They argued that extreme poverty in Africa plays a significant role in contributing to desire. More than a quarter of hunger rates in the world come from the African continent. That is, a fifth of Africans is malnourished, and contributes to the highest standard in the world. Besides, more than 30% of children in Africa suffer from disorders like stunting that are caused by chronic malnutrition. The study also contributed that; Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Kenya are the leading countries in Africa, with the highest rates of mortality. Besides, there are many cases in malnutrition and complication at birth, as well as other diseases like malaria, diarrheal, and pneumonia that contributes to the early deaths of many children. Furthermore, people who are living with HIV in Africa are 25 million, which includes 2.9 million children with either single parents, or without parents ("On the poorest continent, the plight of children is dramatic," 2020)

According to the investigation that was carried out by Ojoajogwu (2014), on investigating significant causes of poverty in Nigeria, it was found that governance plays a vital role. Looking at most countries in Africa, the systems of governance lacks accountability, there is a lack of effectiveness and no rule of law. Furthermore, the governments in place are characterized by violence and political instability, quality regulatory is lacking, and there is rampant corruption (Ojoajogwu, 2014). All these have been based on data that have been drawn from various sources from individuals that have different perceptions of governance.

According to Thornton et al. (2006) in mapping the vulnerability of climate and poverty, Africa is fighting effectively in poverty reduction. However, the case is very small since, at the end of 2019, the total number of people who had moved out o poverty was 3, 000 per day. It is also argued that it is expected that the poverty reduction in Africa will increase this year by one million people. If this trend continues in 2010, the rate of poverty reduction in Africa will reduce by 45 million people, from 35% to 24% ("On the poorest continent, the plight of children is dramatic," 2020). Nevertheless, this does not mean that the continent will successfully achieve sustainable goals. An approximate of 377 million people in Africa will remain to live under $1.90 in a day, meaning that only a few Africans will have ended poverty completely ("On the poorest continent, the plight of children is dramatic," 2020)

Poverty Solving Approach

The research question of this investigation will be; which is the most effective way of eradicating poverty in Africa? Various methods have been used in Africa to reduce the rate of poverty. The costs of education in most African countries have reduced, thus contributing to poverty reduction. However, some of the countries like Mali, Malawi, Niger, as well as Nigeria do not have reliable information that indicates the actual number of people living in poverty (Hyden, 2007). That to say, governments from these nations cannot allocate the right resources for them.

In solving this issue, I am going to research the appropriate mean of poverty reduction. I will use a cross-section research design to obtain information from people living under the poverty line. The reason for using this form of design is because it enhances the collection of data from one point to represent another related area. That to say, the conducted research will represent all countries in Africa. The selection of the respondents will be done using a random sampling technique, whereby a few numbers will be selected from those living in poverty. The main aim of the investigation will be to collect views of poverty eradication from the poor and enhance their implications. Besides, I will encourage the respondents to willingly take part in responding. Therefore, I will have a brief introduction with them to inform them that the purpose of the investigation will be research-oriented and for their excellent, and not a form of victimization. I believe through the cooperation of the respondents, and the inquiry will get completed within the shortest time possible.

After acquiring information successfully, it will be edited for accuracy and completeness. Then it will be coded to enhance an analysis using a statistical tool (Statistical Packages for Social Sciences). The obtained results will be interpreted using a coefficient of determination/ goodness of fit. The coefficient of commitment will be useful in displaying the relationship between poverty in Africa, and effective ways of eradicating it. Besides, the results will help make the right recommendations concerning poverty eradication. Then they will be presented to food and security departments in the country.

G Hyden, G. (2007). Poverty and Hunger Special Feature: Governance and poverty reduction in Africa. Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences, 104(43), 16751-16756. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0700696104

Ojoajogwu, O. (2014). Beyond being the Largest Economy in Africa: An Ethical Inquiry into the Major Causes and Effects of Poverty in Nigeria. Advances In Social Sciences Research Journal, 1(8), 130-138. https://doi.org/10.14738/assrj.18.667

On the poorest continent, the plight of children is dramatic. SOS-US-EN. (2020). Retrieved 3 March 2020, from https://www.sos-usa.org/about-us/where-we-work/africa/poverty-in-africa#:~:text=One%20fifth%20of%20people%20living,rate%20of%20malnourished%20people%20worldwide.&text=In%20sub%2DSaharan%20Africa%2C%2059,fight%20poverty%20for%20their%20families.

Thornton, P. K., Jones, P. G., Owiyo, T., Kruska, R. L., Herrero, M. T., Kristjanson, P. M., ... & Omolo, A. (2006). Mapping climate vulnerability and poverty in Africa.

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CT has 64 ‘concentrated poverty’ census tracts. Accepting it as given is ‘criminal’, lawmaker says

Hartford’s Clay Arsenal neighborhood borders encapsulate three of the poorest census tracts in the state.

Of the more than 6,000 residents that call the Clay Arsenal neighborhood home, roughly 50% live below the federal poverty line, data shows. More than 27% of the adult population lacks a high school diploma. Nearly 48% of residents between the ages of 20 and 64 do not have a job, according to census data. And home ownership rates are so low that less than 10% of the housing units in the neighborhood are owner-occupied.

But when Jean Holloway walks through her Clay Arsenal neighborhood, she sees endless potential.

Holloway envisions a community with more homeownership opportunities, a place where small merchants can fill the now abandoned storefronts — a Clay Arsenal where families and residents will choose to put down roots, instead of treating it as a stop “until you can do better.”

“If I wasn’t working for my neighbors, I really would not know what to do,” Holloway said. “You have to want your neighborhood to grow.”

A plan for change

State Sen. John Fonfara   also wants the Clay Arsenal, and other neighborhoods plagued by high concentrations of poverty to have a fighting chance at prosperity.

Fonfara said the Clay Arsenal served as the inspiration for Senate Bill 456 , “An Act Requiring the Development and Implementation of Ten-Year Plans to Eradicate Concentrated Poverty in the State.”

It’s a plan to tackle a problem that Fonfara said society has accepted as something that “always will be” — an acceptance he described as “criminal.”

The proposal would declare concentrated poverty a crisis in the state and lay the groundwork for its eradication by allowing qualifying census tracts to partake in 10-year-plans to achieve and sustain a reduction in the number of households living below the federal poverty level.

Under the bill, a “concentrated poverty census tract,” is any tract where 30% or more of the population makes less than the federal poverty guidelines. A total of 64 census tracts in 11 municipalities in the state meet that distinction.

Fonfara emphasized that concentrated poverty differs from other forms of poverty by walling off access to educational and career opportunities that might be available to youth without economic resources who grow up in wealthier towns.

Fonfara also said residents who grow up in neighborhoods with high concentrations of poverty are disproportionately “Black and Latino.” He said the residents also are more likely to become involved with the criminal justice system and live shorter lives than their peers, regardless of their income.

“It’s just not a place where a lot of poor people live. It is a generator of poverty,” Fonfara said. “It dooms a high percentage of folks who grow up there and live there to a substandard living experience.”

Fonfara’s proposal would establish an Office of Neighborhood Investment and Community Engagement in the Department of Economic and Community Development that would partner with local Community Development Corporations to oversee and develop 10-year-plans to reduce poverty to a rate of 20% or less.

The initiative’s rollout would start with a three-year pilot program in the four municipalities with the highest number of qualifying census tracts — Hartford, Bridgeport, New Haven, and Waterbury.

“Unfortunately not a lot has been successful in the country at dismantling concentrated poverty. But I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that we were obsessed with investing in people, and nowhere near the same amount investing in place,” Fonfara said. “This is an opportunity in our community to really not just transform lives, but transform communities because communities impact lives.”

Fonfara’s bill cleared a major hurdle Wednesday when it passed the Finance Revenue and Bonding Committee in a 38 to 14 vote that drew the support of four Republican members, but also some questions..

The proposal that passed through committee, eliminated a provision that would have allowed any aggrieved resident of a qualifying census tract to bring civil action against the state or municipal officials who failed to carry out their responsibilities or execute the 10-year plan in a timely manner.

Instead, the bill now reserves the right of action to community development corporations — a change that Fonfara hoped would alleviate some of his colleagues’ concerns.

But Republican Rep. Holly Cheeseman , a ranking member on the committee, said she still considers the right of action language, and other portions of the bill, problematic.

“I think there are question marks on how this is going to happen,” Cheeseman said.

Cheeseman said she questions whether the Department of Economic Community Development has the skill set to administer this initiative. Additionally, Cheeseman feels the bill could do more to specify the fine points in the pilot program, define some of the steps in the 10-year plan, and identify the criteria used to determine the programs success.

Cheeseman said she would feel more confident if state lawmakers could invest in proven best-practices.

Despite her concerns, Cheseman said she supports the bill’s mission and hopes to work with her colleagues to craft a proposal she believes will have a “reasonable chance of success” in the real world.

“I am committed to finding a way to pass legislation that will give every man, woman, child in Connecticut the options they need to have a successful life,” Cheseman said.

“We want everyone in Connecticut to succeed. And if there are obstacles to that success, we need to find ways to remove them,” Cheeseman said. “We have shared goals, it’s how we get to those goals.”

Fonfara said he feels confident that his bill will pass, but cautioned that eradicating concentrated poverty  “won’t be easy.”

“This would be the toughest thing that we’ve ever done, because in America, generally, we don’t reverse this kind of thing, but we owe it to the people who live there,” Fonfara said. “Until we, as a state, say, ‘We are going to end this, we’re going to eradicate concentrated poverty,’ we are accepting of it. We are OK with it.”

Making it work

Fonfara highlighted three key aspects that distinguish the proposal from previous initiatives  — the bill focuses on place, puts the state “on the clock” to solve the problem, and promotes community-driven and community-owned development.

“The idea of the CDC (Community Development Corporation) here is that it is ground up, it’s not top down, it’s residents and businesses that are committed to the future of that neighborhood.”

Connecticut adopted its official CDC framework during the 2022 session, but the concept dates back to the 1960s.

Fonfara said he was inspired by Chicanos Por La Causa , a nonprofit CDC that operates in five southwestern states that works to expand health and human services, housing, education, economic development and advocacy in member communities.

“I said this is what we need in neighborhoods, to be able to say ‘When that building across the street there is foreclosed on, we’re going to have the first right of refusal with the bank or the financing company,” Fonfara said. “They’ll pay the same thing to the bank that the bank would have gotten elsewhere, but now it’s to a responsible owner and we will rehab it with our people.”

Jeffrey Stewart, a Hartford native who serves as the chair of the Clay Arsenal CDC, said the thought of being among the first CDCs to take on the 10-year initiative would be both exciting and nerve wracking.

“The spotlight will be on to see how we do,” Stewart said.

Stewart said the Clay Arsenal CDC has worked to break down silos and partner with residents, local organizations and community stakeholders to build on small wins while chipping away at long-term projects.

Stewart said Clay Arsenal is working to boost its curb appeal by offering fence repairs, planting trees, and renovating abandoned buildings into new housing units. The community has its eye on eventual home-ownership initiatives and human capital projects that offer wrap-around services for youth and families including financial literacy, job training and other services.

Stewart and Fonfara said the goal is to revitalize the community, eliminating factors that push people out while building a culture that attracts more residents to move in.

Fonfara said that one of the drivers of concentrated poverty is that wealth does not stay in the community — when people start to do better economically, they leave.

“You hear often in the community about ‘he got out’ or ‘he never got out, the streets got him,’ what have,” Fonfara said. “Place matters when it comes to that level of poverty.”

“I don’t want people to have to leave their neighborhood,” Fonfara said. “This is about saying to the folks that live there, we’re going to invest in (this) place.”

For Corrie Betts, turning his back on the community that raised him was not an option.

Betts grew up on Martin Street in the Northeast section of Hartford, in a census tract that houses the third-highest concentration of poverty in the city.

As a boy, Betts remembered a sense of community that tied his neighborhood together. He recalled running through the plaza, chatting with neighbors as he bagged their groceries and getting his first job at the Hartford Public Library.

But resources, support and guidance were limited. At the time, Betts said he saw few “legitimate avenues” for success. The idea of college was a “distant dream” and crime seemed like the “only option.”

In 10th grade, Betts dropped out of school and eventually found himself trapped in the criminal justice system’s revolving door.

“When you’re living in poverty, the pressure to survive can push you towards desperate measures. I saw friends and family members turn to illegal activities just to make ends meet. And it felt like that was the only path,” Betts said. “Deep down, I knew that it wasn’t the life I wanted for myself.”

Betts remembers 2013 as the year that “things turned around.”

He was stipulated into a faith-based substance abuse program that allowed him to understand his fears and confront them. Other interventions gave him the final push to break the cycle.

“There was a judge who had asked me a question and her question was ‘Corrie, when are you ever going to love yourself and be committed in anything?’ ” Betts recalled, “It was like a light came on. With the right support and the right people speaking into my life, I challenged myself.”

Betts said he went back to school, got his associate’s degree and worked his way up to a bachelor’s, master’s and an honorary doctorate.

Today he is the president of the Greater Hartford NAACP, director of the substance abuse program he once went through, and the founder of “ Wake Up Wednesdays ,” a youth violence prevention program..

For Betts, continuing to work and live in his neighborhood was critical.

“I don’t mind being a poster child for a community in which I love,” Betts said. “We live in a society where people have to believe it to see it…That’s what keeps me coming back because I’ve been through it.”

Betts said he believes the 10-year plans will be a game changer and allow neighborhoods to retain residents who too often see moving away as a threshold for success.

“We’re so fast to leave a neighborhood not understanding if we stay here and strive together and fight for what our neighborhoods need in a more meaningful way, you don’t have to leave,” Betts said.

He said he “really believes” in this proposal, the oversight it guarantees, and its potential to improve economic, educational and health outcomes for youth living in Connecticut’s poorest communities.

“When it comes to addressing this, I think it (goes) way beyond just what the statistics say. It’s personal, it’s about breaking the cycle that trapped me and continues to trap so many countless others in this despair of hopelessness,” Betts said. “By eradicating concentrated poverty, we’re not just addressing economic disparities, we’re giving young people like myself hope for a brighter future.”

“Their circumstances don’t have to define their destiny,” Betts added.

©2024 Hartford Courant. Visit courant.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

In northwest Syria, unexploded ordinances and drone strikes make daily life perilous

Tens of thousands of unexploded ordnance have been removed, but more remain.

IDLIB, Syria and PARIS -- Abdelkader Madirati was only 8 years old when he was the victim of a cluster bomb which caused the amputation of his right hand and most of his leg in the town of Tadef, north of Aleppo, where he lives.

"He found a cluster bomb that he thought was a small ball, and it exploded in his hand," his mother told ABC News.

Madirati lives in the country's northwest, where locals and aid groups said that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces have in recent months escalated their strikes on civilians, including the use of Russian-made guided missiles and drones, amongst its already deadly arsenal including unexploded explosive ordnance -- relics of over a decade-long crisis -- that have threatened farmers, fishermen, food production and security.

The Carter Center said that from December 2012 to May 2021, about 972,051 explosive munitions were used across Syria, with an estimated failure rate of 10% to 30%, leaving some 100,000 to 300,000 of them undetonated.

Home to 4.5 million people, this part of the country is also facing other crises. The communities are still facing a worsening economic crisis and reeling from last year's earthquakes, which claimed the lives of at least 60,000 people and injured many more across northwest Syria and its neighbor Turkey.

Under the care of Dr. Gazhal Hilal at the Happy Steps Center for Prosthetics -- where the average cost of a prosthetic limb ranges from $400 to $1,000 -- in the city of Azaz in the northern countryside of Aleppo, Madirati has been working on his recovery and is now able to walk again, thanks to a prosthetic leg he's been fitted with.

But the journey has been long and not without financial strain on the family of four.

Living about 50 km away from the center, which they had to visit daily, was "a major financial obstacle for us as a poor family," with a round trip car fare of about $30, said his mother, who asked not to be named.

She told ABC News that she borrowed money from relatives and friends to cover the expenses, and to this day still owes her neighbor $300.

Now 10, Madirati said he's only starting to get to terms with his injury, however, he's also been facing bullying.

"Everything has changed," he said. "My friends are now refusing to play with me. Some of them make fun of me and others are afraid of my appearance. So I began to refrain from leaving the house and left school."

He added, "I wish I had friends to play with, without them making fun of me. I wish to return to school, and to have a screen in my home to watch children's programs, and I also wish to have a smart prosthetic hand."

His mother said the bullying and mockery destroyed her son's mental health, and that his "future is ruined forever."

MORE: Giving birth in a war zone: The struggles of many Syrian mothers

Since 2016, the White Helmets, formerly known as Syria Civil Defence, have been working on identifying and removing unexploded ordnance with a dedicated and specialized team, which, throught 2023, was able to remove 24,000 munitions of war remnants, including about 22,000 cluster bombs.

Last year alone, they documented 24 explosions of war remnants in northwestern Syria, which led to the deaths of seven people, including four children, and the injuries of 29 others, including 19 children and two women.

In the same time, they identified 531 areas contaminated with munitions, including cluster munitions, projectiles, grenades, missiles, mortar shells, air-dropped bombs, guided missiles and landmines.

But this task is not without its danger. Since they started, four volunteers have lost their lives, and others have been injured, as "large numbers of remnants of war and unexploded ordnance [are] in areas close to the contact lines with the regime forces and Russia."

Local farmers have been wounded

Anwar Halabi, 64, a farmer who owns almost 4.9 acres in the village of Al-Hamidiyah, in the Al-Ghab Plain, was struck by a grounded missile on March 1, while spraying insecticide on his land onboard his tractor. Propelled a few meters away from the engine, he received shrapnel across his body, broke a knee, and lost his hearing and some flesh in his legs, as well as his tractor.

Al-Ghab Plain, located in the Al-Suqaylabiyah District, which covers about 595,523 acres of land, and the Orontes, a 355-mile-long river beginning in Lebanon and flowing through the Turkish province of Hatay, have been bearing the brunt of the regime's increased attacks in recent months.

"Targeting farmers and agricultural lands is not new, the area [is] used to be attacked every two or three weeks," Halabi told ABC News, arguing however that it escalated at the beginning of year, and now, "not a day is without targeting." It is "a major obstacle for all farmers," according to him, who hasn't been able to work his land since the attack.

The Al-Assad government has rarely acknowledged the strikes within its own country. The president last year told Sky News Arabia about the fight against terrorism, saying, "If we assume that the state was the one that carried out the killing and displacement, then it bears responsibility, but there is terrorism and the state was fighting terrorism, and terrorism was killing, destroying and burning."

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He said the state's role is to "defend" itself against what it sees as terrorism, later adding, "The one who bears responsibility is the one who intended to wage war, the one who planned the war, and the one who attacked, not the one being attacked."

MORE: Turkey-Syria earthquake: Death toll climbs to over 41,000

Mounir Mustafa, of the White Helmets, said, "This war, the siege, the destruction of infrastructure, and the targeting of hospitals and schools with attacks is a systematic and deliberate policy."

White Helmets team said they documented in 2023 the killing of 162 people, including 46 children and 23 women, and the wounding of 684 others due to attacks by the government, Russia and Iranian militias.

For Halabi, the farmer, he said he fears "this situation will be a disaster for me and my family, because I will not be able to reap the wheat crop, which means losing my entire season and losing the costs of the seeds I planted."

Agricultural workers represent about 30% of the total workforce in northwestern Syria, where almost 90% of people are unemployed, according to Islamic Relief.

"Assad's forces are focusing on Al-Ghab Plain and the western Aleppo countryside because they are among the most fertile areas," Tammam Al-Mahmoud, director general of agriculture in Idlib, said.

Though the doctors told him he'll recover in time with the help of physical therapy, the 58-year-old says, "this injury destroyed my life and I lost my only source of livelihood."

Al-Mahmoud estimates the area where drones are most likely to strike including between 37,065 to 49,421 acres of land, and that the lives of all farmers, from the Latakia to the western Aleppo countrysides, are in peril.

Saleh Jumaa, 48, who's been fishing on the banks of the Orontes River for 20 years, said drones used by the regime pose "a great danger to our presence on the banks", and makes him, and his colleagues, "a constant and easy target."

Two fishermen have already died, Jumaa said, including someone he knows from the village of Muhambal.

Though he escaped a recent attack, he says he'll continue fishing to earn a living and feed his children, knowing that "unfortunately, the price for my work may be my blood."

A region were food security is perilous

At the end of 2023, the World Food Programme said it was was forced to end its general food assistance in Syria, due to a lack of funding, leaving 3.2 million people in need.

In already dire circumstances, these targeted attacks gravely jeopardize food production.

"The bombing may lead to the burning of crops, as happened the previous year, and harvesting operations may be delayed or not take place," said Al-Mahmoud, the agriculture director, adding that they were generating the "collapse and the loss of a large portion of production, which will lead to economic losses for our fellow farmers."

White Helmets' Mustafa said that "food insecurity has reached record levels, as 80% of Syrians suffer from food insecurity, and more than 90% of Syrians live below the poverty line, while the price of the food basket has increased by 85% over last year."

"Its [wheat] loss greatly affects the food security of the residents of northwestern Syria," according to Al-Mahmoud.

But he noted that bakeries were operating routinely so far because they're using flour from last year's stock. Problems may appear in August, if the wheat crop is damaged or not harvested, he said.

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