This is the ninth blog in a series about how countries can make progress on the interlinked objectives of poverty, shared prosperity and a livable planet. For more information on the topic, read the 2024 Poverty, Prosperity, and Planet Report.
When the World Bank reports that about 700 million people in the world live in extreme poverty today, you might also like to know who these people are and where they live. These additional facts will inform decisions by policymakers and help target policies, programs, and interventions effectively to reduce poverty. Consider the following example: more than three-quarters of the global extreme poor lived in rural areas in 2022, and half of the global extreme poor lived in rural Sub-Saharan Africa alone (see Figure 1). These statistics add perspective and are valuable for targeting anti-poverty programs when combined with country-level poverty statistics, such as two-thirds of the extreme poor in 2022 lived in Sub-Saharan Africa and three-quarters of the extreme poor in 2022 lived in Sub-Saharan Africa or in fragile and conflict-affected countries.
This blog presents the demographic profile of not only the extreme poor (measured at the international poverty line of $2.15 a day) but also the poor at a higher poverty line of $6.85 a day, which is more relevant for middle-income countries. It profiles the global poor by rural/urban location, age, and educational status. The analysis spans up to 152 countries with microdata from around 2022, the latest year with sufficient data coverage. The data represent 87 percent of the world’s population.
Poverty is predominantly a rural phenomenon, but a significant share of the poor live in urban settings
The rate of extreme poverty is higher in rural areas than urban areas in nearly all regions, with the rural poverty rate at 16 percent and the urban poverty rate at 5 percent for the world (see Figure 2, panel a). The difference between rural and urban poverty is most pronounced in Sub-Saharan Africa, where the rural poverty rate is 46 percent, and the urban poverty rate is 20 percent. This explains why two-thirds of the global extreme poor live in Sub-Saharan Africa, while half of the global extreme poor in rural Sub-Saharan Africa alone (see Figure 1, panel a).
At the $6.85 poverty line, both rural and urban poverty rates are higher, as expected; however, importantly, rural-urban gaps in poverty levels are larger in nearly all regions (Figure 2, panel b). The absolute difference in rural and urban poverty rates is most pronounced in East Asia and Pacific and in Latin America and the Caribbean (around 25 percentage points each), especially compared with South Asia (17 percentage points). Globally, the difference in the rural and urban poverty rates is 35 percentage points at the $6.85 poverty line, compared to 11 percentage points at the $2.15 extreme poverty line.
Poverty is still largely a rural phenomenon at the higher poverty line, but from a global point of view it is less concentrated in rural areas than extreme poverty. This is explained largely by the large share of the extreme poor in Sub-Saharan Africa who live in rural areas. At the $6.85 poverty line, two-thirds of the global poor lived in rural areas in 2022 (Figure 1, panel b).
Rural populations therefore need to be in the focus of poverty reduction efforts, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, particularly when extreme poverty is addressed. Yet the urban poor cannot be ignored since around a third of the global poor live in urban areas (according to the $6.85 line).
Children and young adults are more likely to be living in poor households
Globally, 6 out of 10 extremely poor people (living on less than $2.15 per day) are children or young adults. The share of children who live in extreme poverty is higher than the equivalent share for youth or adults. More precisely, the extreme poverty rate for children is 17 percent, compared with about 12 percent for youth and 7 percent for adults (Figure 3, panel a). In Sub-Saharan Africa, the region that drives the global estimates of extreme poverty, poverty rates for children and adults are 42 and 31 percent, respectively. At the poverty line of $6.85, while poverty rates are significantly higher across several regions, the poverty rate is still higher for children and youth than for adults (Figure 3, panel b).
Poverty reduction policies should prioritize the well-being of children and young adults to give everyone a fair start in life, irrespective of parental resources. Poor households tend to have more children yet have limited financial resources to provide adequate nutrition and education for these children and give them a chance to have a better life in the future (see here and here). Young adults fare worse in the labor market, especially if they are women (see here and here). Children and women are disproportionately affected by economic and climatic shocks and recover more slowly from such shocks (see here and here).
The poor are less educated, and COVID-19 increased educational gaps for children
The Report confirms the well-known negative correlation between educational attainment and poverty with recent data. In nearly all regions of the world, the rate of extreme poverty declines with education (Figure 4, panel a). Among the population aged 15 or above globally, one-fifth of those without any formal education lives in extreme poverty, while 3 percent of those with tertiary education lives in extreme poverty. These patterns are compounded by regional effects. People without formal education who live in Sub-Saharan Africa show the highest rate of extreme poverty at 39 percent, while only 0.6 percent of the same demographic group residing in Europe or Central Asia lives in extreme poverty. Tertiary education in Sub-Saharan Africa is associated with lower levels of extreme poverty, but it is still 9 percent—a rate comparable to that of secondary school graduates in South Asia or that of people having no formal education in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Focusing on closing education gaps is also a policy priority, given the significant educational losses due to the pandemic, particularly for the poor. School closures led to learning losses in language, literacy, and mathematics of around 30 percent in multiple countries. In 2021, in several countries a quarter of all young people were not in education, employment, or training. Poorer households were also less likely to use remote work and schooling. Schooling disruptions affected poorer households more than richer ones. It is estimated that students in low- and lower-middle-income countries could face future earning losses of up to 10 percent due to the pandemic, suggesting a permanent scarring effect. The loss in schooling is likely to have a larger impact on poverty in the future than the immediate effect of the pandemic on poverty.
More details on the demographic profile of the global poor and priority areas for addressing poverty are outlined in the 2024 Poverty, Prosperity, and Planet Report.
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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