During the last year, a new poverty narrative gained acceptance across the world. The trends in our global poverty predictions—which we published on the World Poverty Clock—were confirmed by several other sources. Including the World Bank, the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). By and large, the overall message is a discouraging refrain. Global poverty reduction is slowing down, Africa is now home to the majority of the world’s extremely poor (living on less than $1.90 per day in 2011 PPP). After that, Nigeria has become the most visible frontier in the fight against extreme poverty.
Following last month’s World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) Spring Meetings, the World Poverty Clock has updated. To reflect newly available and revised data related to income distribution, national accounts, and GDP forecasts for nearly every country in the world. The resulting new estimates and forecasts on the state of global poverty, released today, point to a depressing new dynamic.
THE PACE OF POVERTY REDUCTION IS DOWN BY TWO-FIFTHS SINCE 2017
When the World Poverty Clock has launched exactly two years ago. On average, one person escaped poverty every second. Last year, the pace of poverty reduction slowed down to 0.8 people per second. Our latest projections show that the pace of poverty reduction has further slowed down to 0.6 people per second. This is a result of the slowdown in the global economy. Affecting several African countries negatively as well as the negative trends in important crisis countries such as Venezuela and Yemen.
With this update, World Data Lab projects that Africa has 427 million people living in extreme poverty. This means that the continent expected to be home to almost three-quarters of global poverty at the end of 2019. Still, many parts of Africa, such as Ethiopia and Kenya, are making significant progress towards achieving Sustainable Development Goal 1. Ending extreme poverty—by 2030 and this is the reason why Africa has now started to reduce poverty numbers overall. However, even with this progress, these countries are not expected to achieve SDG 1 by 2030.
EXTREME POVERTY IN YEMEN, VENEZUELA, AND TANZANIA HAS INCREASED
Due to conflicts in Yemen and Venezuela and an economic slowdown in Tanzania, some of the biggest increases in poverty projections are in these three countries.
Following the release of new data, the number of Yemenis living in extreme poverty has revised. With an increase of 8.4 million more people than previously estimated. Poor Yemenis now number 17.7 million, representing 57 percent of the country. For Venezuela, we forecast an increase of 2.4 million more people living in extreme poverty than previously estimated. We estimate 8.6 million Venezuelans, representing 26.5 percent of this upper-middle-income country, are now indigent. In Tanzania, 6.1 million more people (23.5 million total) are estimated to be living in extreme poverty than previously forecasted, representing 41.5 percent of the country. There will be serious challenges ahead for East Africa’s third-largest economy. While the country is still expected to significantly reduce poverty over the next decade, it is not expected to achieve SDG 1 by 2030 and is now even more off-track than previously estimated.
TIME’S ALMOST UP
Ten years remain for the global community to mobilize the support needed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. This task is going to be difficult, as it is now evident that the rate of global poverty reduction has slowed down to almost half its pace just a few years ago.
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