Global Overview on Poverty
- 736 million people live in extreme poverty. About half of the world’s poor live in just five countries: India, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, and Bangladesh.
- In developing regions, one in 10 people live on less than $1.90 a day.
- An estimated 2.5 billion people lack access to improved sanitation, which is more than 35 percent of the world’s population.
- One billion people live without electricity, and hundreds of millions more live with unreliable or expensive power.
- Poverty reduction rates are expected to slow down over the next decade.
Hope on the War on Poverty
In 2015, countries around the world adopted the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a set of 17 targets intended to combat poverty, reduce inequality, improve global health outcomes and protect the planet. Prior to the SDGs, the incredibly successful Millennium Development Goals concluded in 2015 after 25 years of remarkable achievements in tackling global poverty. The SDGs seek to further expand upon these accomplishments, with a key target to end extreme poverty for all people by 2030.
A few bright lights of accomplishments:
- In 2015, the percentage of the global population living in extreme poverty fell below 10 percent for the first time.
- In 2015, 702 million people lived in extreme poverty, down from 902 million in 2012 and 1.9 billion in 1990.
- Ten percent of the world’s population lived at or below $1.90 a day in 2015, down from 36 percent in 1990. Overall, global poverty rates have been cut by more than half since 2000.
- In East Asia and the Pacific, the proportion of people living in extreme poverty took a nosedive from 60.2 percent in 1990 to just 3.5 percent in 2013.
- In 2017, the World Poverty Clock launched, tracking the progress toward the 17 SDG goals. It currently estimates that one person escapes extreme poverty every second — equivalent to 86,400 every day.
Join the global community and our war to end poverty – 30 ways you can act now.