How has the profile of extreme poverty changed over the last decade? Five key facts

There are over 830 million people around the world living in extreme poverty today, but who are they, and what do we know about their daily lives? A deeper understanding of the characteristics of people and households living in extreme poverty can help us design more effective policies. To gain those insights, we need key data.  

A recent update to the World Bank’s Global Monitoring Database (GMD)—the largest compilation of harmonized household survey data in the world – provides such an opportunity.

The GMD is the backbone of the World Bank’s poverty measurement work, serving as the main input for the global poverty estimates published in the Poverty and Inequality Platform, and every two years, in the Poverty, Prosperity, and Planet Report. The database covers more than 150 countries, representing 69% of the global population and 97% of the population in low- and middle-income economies. Here are five key facts we have learned from recent data.

#1: The share of people living in extreme poverty who reside in low-income countries has nearly doubled over the last decade

Globally, poverty has fallen over the last decade, and there has been a significant change in the geographic profile of extreme poverty. Using the World Bank’s latest income group classification, a clear pattern emerges: lower-middle-income economies drove much of the global progress, while poverty has become more concentrated in low-income economies.

The shift is striking. The share of the world’s population living in low-income countries edged up only slightly, from about 8% in 2013 to 9% in 2023. Yet their share of the extreme poor nearly doubled—from 23% to 44%. A decade ago, most of the world’s poor were found in lower-middle-income economies. Today, poverty—though reduced overall—is increasingly entrenched in the poorest countries. Nearly half of the world’s extreme poor now live in low-income economies, up from less than a quarter ten years ago.

^{Note: income classification based on the latest 2026 fiscal year, updated in June 2025.}

#2: Extreme poverty is increasingly concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa

Extreme poverty has fallen almost everywhere—across South Asia, East Asia, and Latin America—except in two regions: the Middle East and North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan (MNAAP), and Sub-Saharan Africa. In 2013, half of the world’s poor lived in South Asia and East Asia & Pacific. By 2023, that share had dropped to just 15%. Africa moved in the opposite direction: a decade ago, 4 in 10 of the world’s poor lived there; today it is 7 in 10. Seven out of ten of the world’s poor now live in Africa, up from just four out of ten in 2013.

#3: Despite progress, global poverty remains predominantly rural

Globally, poverty has declined in both cities and the countryside, but the biggest gains have been in rural areas, where extreme poverty dropped by nearly a third—from 26.7% in 2013 to 17.4% in 2023. Urban poverty also fell, but more modestly, from 7.6% to 6%. As urbanization continues, the world’s population is now split almost evenly between rural and urban areas. Still, poverty remains overwhelmingly rural: nearly three-quarters of the world’s extreme poor live in rural communities.

In Africa, this imbalance is even starker—out of every 7 poor people in the region, 5 live in rural areas and just 2 in urban areas. And unlike other regions, both rural and urban poverty in Africa have increased. Urban poverty in particular rose by 4 percentage points over the decade, leaving 50 million more people in cities living in extreme poverty. Africa added 50 million more urban poor in the last decade, even as urban poverty declined elsewhere.

Poverty rates ($3.00 2021 PPP) by location, global and regional

#4: More than half of the global extreme poor live in rural Africa

These trends carry major implications for how poverty is distributed globally. Rural Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for only 10% of the world’s population but now makes up more than half of the global extreme poor—rising from 33% in 2013 to 53% in 2023. At the same time, the share of the global extreme poor living in Africa’s urban cities has more than doubled, from 7.4% to 18.4%, even though the region’s urban population represents just 7.4% of the world’s total. Rural Africa now holds more than half of the world’s extreme poor, despite representing only 1 in 10 people globally.

The only other region where poverty is so disproportionately rural is MNAAP, where rural areas host about 7% of the world’s extreme poor despite accounting for just 4.4% of the global population—a much smaller imbalance compared to Africa.

#5 Children comprise half of all people living in extreme poverty

The demographic composition of poverty has also shifted in important ways. The share of children as a percent of total population has remained broadly stable over the past decade, but children now comprise a larger proportion of those living in extreme poor households. In 2023, 46% of people living in extreme poverty were children under 15. Put differently, for every two people in extreme poverty, one is a child.

Poverty has fallen across all groups, yet the concentration of the poor has increased among children (0–14) and youth (15–24). Children under 15 still have the highest rates of extreme poverty, and their poverty rate is significantly higher than that of adults over 25.

^{Note: The analysis does not capture inequalities within the household. It captures children living in poor households, which are classified as poor based on per capita household income or consumption.}

Looking ahead

The story of poverty over the last decade is one of both progress and inertia. Overall, global poverty has declined, and many regions have seen significant reductions. But the gains have been uneven, with Africa and low-income economies increasingly at the center of the challenge. Rural communities, children, and young people remain disproportionately affected.

These shifts highlight an urgent priority for global development: tackling entrenched poverty where it is deepest, while ensuring that the next generation is not locked into deprivation by geography, demographics, or structural barriers. Poverty is falling globally, but it is not happening fast enough among children, youth and in rural areas, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. 

The data needed to create a full profile of the poor are immense. For instance, while information on overall household income or consumption may be available, other information on household demographics may be not available. Sometimes surveys do not collect such information, sometimes survey respondents choose not to provide it. Thus, the list of countries included here differs from the set of countries that are used in the estimation of global poverty in the World Bank’s Poverty and Inequality Platform.