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Articles by Marta Schoch
April 2022 global poverty update from the World Bank
The April 2022 update to the newly launched Poverty and Inequality Platform (PIP) presents new global poverty estimates for 2018 and revises previously published estimates, as a result of newly available survey data and several changes to the underlying data (see this document for more details). The global poverty rate (at the US$1.90 poverty line) in 2018 is 8.6 percent, down from 9.1 in 2017, equivalent to a decline by 28 million poor people between the two years.
Nigeria wants to end poverty by 2030. How can it achieve this?
Before COVID-19, around 80 million people in Nigeria – 40% of the population – lived below the poverty line. Nigeria now aspires to lift all its people out of poverty by 2030. In the short run, the country needs to tackle COVID-related inequalities, such as vaccine distribution and learning losses because of school closures. Longer term, macroeconomic reforms and access to infrastructure covering everything from drinking water to telecoms networks needs to be improved.
The new website for the World Bank’s Multidimensional Poverty Measure
Poverty has many dimensions that go beyond monetary measures of consumption or income. Multidimensional poverty measures, such as the Global MPI produced by UNDP and OPHI, try to take into account these multiple facets of poverty.
March 2021 global poverty update from the World Bank
The March 2021 global poverty update from the World Bank revises the previously published global and regional estimates from 1981 to 2017. In summary, the updated poverty estimates continue to show a decrease in global poverty up until 2017, and to 2018/2019 for some regions, which predates the reversal projected for 2020 as a result of COVID-19. For the regions with sufficient population coverage, the 2018 estimates are updated and new poverty estimates for 2019 are added.
African countries show mixed progress towards poverty reduction and half of them have an extreme poverty rate above 35%
Extreme poverty will become a predominantly Sub-Saharan African phenomenon in the coming decade and the continent will be home to the lion’s share of the global poor by 2030. The recently published Poverty and Shared Prosperity report 2020 shows that the concentration of high poverty rates in Sub-Saharan Africa recalls the image of a poverty belt extending from Senegal to Ethiopia and from Mali to Madagascar (see Figure 1).
The number of poor people continues to rise in Sub-Saharan Africa, despite a slow decline in the poverty rate
One reason behind the slowdown in global extreme poverty reduction is the slow progress in Sub-Saharan Africa. The latest estimates show that the regional poverty rate decreased by 1.6 percentage points between 2015 and 2018. This translates to 40% of the population living below the US$1.90-a-day poverty line in 2018 and Sub-Saharan Africa accounting for two-thirds of the global extreme poor population.
Sub-Saharan Africa shows largest overlaps between monetary and non-monetary poverty
Poverty is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. When poor people are asked in participatory studies what makes them feel poor, they indicate a wide range of deprivations: not having enough to eat, having inadequate housing material, being sick, having limited or no formal education, having no work, and living in unsafe neighborhoods. Multidimensional poverty measures, such as the Global MPI produced by UNDP and OPHI, attempt to reflect this complex experience and inform policies to address it.
A quarter of the world lives in societal poverty
One of the twin goals of the World Bank, as well as SDG 1.1, is to reduce extreme poverty by 2030. Measures of absolute poverty, such as poverty at the US$1.90, US$3.20 and the US$5.50 international poverty lines, have the advantage of remaining fixed (in constant dollars), allowing one to measure poverty against the same benchmark over time and across countries.
Monitoring poverty at the US$3.20 and US$5.50 lines: differences and similarities with extreme poverty trends
Poverty does not end when a household crosses the US$1.90 per person per day International Poverty Line (IPL). The IPL was constructed based on the prevailing national poverty lines for some of the poorest economies in the world. When it was set up, 60% of the global population lived in low-income countries, making the IPL a meaningful measure for a large share of the world’s population.
Global poverty reduction is slowing, regional trends help understanding why
The latest global poverty estimates show that 9.2% of the global population lives below the $1.90 international poverty line in 2017. This translates into 689 million people still living in extreme poverty. As discussed in the Poverty and Shared Prosperity report published last month, the new estimates confirm a slowdown in the pace of poverty reduction, which has been observed over the last few years (also see discussion in the previous edition of the report).
Where the extreme poor live
The latest poverty estimates suggest a deceleration in global poverty reduction for 2017, confirming the trend in the last few years. One of the reasons behind this trend is Sub-Saharan Africa’s slower pace of poverty reduction compared with other regions. One of the key messages of the recently published Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2020 report is that extreme poverty will be a predominantly African phenomenon in the coming decade.
Inequality and social unrest in Latin America: The Tocqueville Paradox revisited
2019 was a year of turmoil. Massive popular protests rocked Hong Kong, Lebanon, Iran, and Iraq. In February three million people are said to have marched in Algeria and large popular uprisings later led to the fall of a long-standing dictatorship in the Sudan. There were protests in richer countries too: The Gilets Jaunes brought chaos to central Paris on multiple occasions.
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