Pandemic poverty
Approximately 70 million people were plunged into extreme poverty by the pandemic in 2020, the largest rise since monitoring began in 1990, according to a new report from the World Bank published this week.
The sharp reversal, after decades of steady progress, makes the goal of ending extreme poverty around the world by 2030 now highly improbable. That's particularly true in the wake of what's happened this year with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, rising inflation and sluggish economic growth around the world.
The bigger picture
By the World Bank’s established standard, where those living on less than $2.15-a-day are deemed to be living in extreme poverty, some 719 million people were under the threshold in 2020 — a year when the world’s poorest paid the highest price for the pandemic.
Whilst the recent global increase is cause for concern, extreme poverty rates had been trending in the right direction for decades before. Over the last 30 years, a period in which the extreme poverty level has fallen by some 28.5%, 2020 is only the second year to have seen the figure increase.
