Where is poverty increasing or decreasing? Which parts of the world face persistently high levels of extreme poverty? Which regions have seen the worst impacts of global crises on poverty levels? The Poverty and Inequality Platform’s (PIP) Aggregates dashboard aims to help answer these questions and more.
The dashboard provides quick access to estimates and interactive visualization of poverty by various World Bank groups including countries classified by new World Bank geographic regions (also a version excluding high-income countries), by old PovcalNet geographic regions (which were formerly used in PIP to report regional aggregates, see discussion below), by latest and historical income groups, by latest and historical fragility, conflict, and violence (FCV) categorization, and by latest and historical World Bank lending group (IDA, IBRD, Blend, or rest). For each group, the poverty rate and millions of poor people are reported at the World Bank’s three global poverty lines currently set at $3.00, $4.20, and $8.30 per person per day in 2021 PPPs.
This blog outlines the various options available to the user to view and download figures and tables as well as the data underlying the visualizations.
Changes to World Bank Group’s regional classification
With the September 2025 update, the geographic regions used to report the poverty rates in PIP now align with the World Bank’s official regional classifications. This implies two key changes. First, PIP (following PovcalNet definition) previously excluded some high-income economies from regional aggregates and placed them into a separate group called “Other High Income”. This group no longer exists, and the countries in this group are reassigned to their respective geographical regions. Additionally, a new North America region is now included. Second, the World Bank reclassified Afghanistan and Pakistan from South Asia to Middle East & North Africa. Consequently, the new poverty rate for South Asia no longer includes these countries, which are now included in the region Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan & Pakistan. The two changes also impact the three-letter codes used for the regions. For more details, see the September 2025 What’s New and this blog.
Estimates of poverty by various groups
The dashboard has two tabs. The first tab allows users to select a group, specific category(s) within the selected group, and the poverty line to visualize the trends in poverty. Figure 1 reports the poverty for the new World Bank regions, which are selected using the dropdown menu on the sidebar on the left. The left panel of the chart reports the poverty rate, and the right panel reports the millions of poor people for all regions. Users have the option to select the region(s) they want to plot using the checkbox options in the sidebar.
Note that Figure 1 reports poverty at the extreme poverty line. Users also have the option to report poverty at the lower middle income ($4.20 per day) and the upper middle income ($8.30 per day) poverty lines as well. The data download button is placed at the bottom of the sidebar.
Figure 1. Poverty by the new regional classification
Source: Poverty and Inequality Platform (September 2025)
Comparing poverty trends for any two groups
The second – Compare Groups – tab allows users to customize the panel by choosing trends from any two groups. This chart could be used to compare the trends between the new and old regional groupings, or compare the trend of a geographic region to that of the latest IDA grouping.
For instance, Figure 2 shows the extreme poverty rate (left panel) and the population living in extreme poverty (right panel) for Middle East & North Africa with Afghanistan and Pakistan (the new region) and without the two countries (the old region). Note that some high-income countries that were previously reported in the Other High-Income group are also now added to the new region. As in the first tab, the poverty thresholds and the download options are available in the sidebar.
Figure 2. Comparing poverty trends for Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan & Pakistan and Middle East & North Africa groups
Source: Poverty and Inequality Platform (September 2025)
More information on the visualizations and the definitions can be found in the “About” page of the dashboard. This page also includes an example Stata code that explains how users can construct these aggregates (regional and other groups) from the available country-year information. For any suggestions, we encourage users to contact us at pip@worldbank.org.
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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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