Poverty can be defined as the situation when a person lacks the necessary resources to meet basic needs including food, clean water, clothing, and shelter. Moreover, taking into consideration the multi-dimensional aspect of poverty, the concept cannot be limited simply to income-related issues since a person may have income but lack other crucial elements such as access to decent healthcare, education, or essential amenities.
As a way to measure poverty, the World Bank, one of the key development organizations in the world, has developed a range of ‘international poverty lines’ represented by the monetary benchmarks below by which an individual is considered to be living in poverty:
World poverty statistics
In the last few decades, multiple countries, assisted by the international community, have made considerable progress in reducing the number of poor with over 1.2 billion people having been elevated out of extreme poverty since 1990. In 2018, the aggregated indicator on global poverty reached a historic minimum of 9.2% and this was projected to fall even lower.
Here are some general facts on global poverty relevant in 2021:
- Based on 2018 World Bank data, the highest rates of extreme poverty were observed in sub-Saharan Africa at 40.2% followed by the South Asian region at 10% and the Middle East and North Africa area at 7.2 %
- The COVID-19 crisis is considered to be the most important factor that has caused a significant reversal in global poverty in the last 20 years
- According to the World Bank, the number of people who could be forced back into extreme poverty due to COVID-19 could rise by 150 million
- The World Bank estimates that the South Asian region will be hit hardest where a figure of between 49 million to 57 million people are expected to be pushed into extreme poverty
- Sub-Saharan Africa is predicted to be the second most affected region with an estimated 26 million to 40 million people forecasted to move into extreme poverty
- World Vision reports that two-thirds of the world’s poor are children and youth while women represent a majority in most regions
- Regional military conflicts and crises amplify poverty rates. The number of people living in extreme poverty in the Middle East and North Africa region has nearly doubled in the last five years due to the conflicts in Syria and Yemen
- The negative effects of climate change are considered to be another factor that can lead to the impoverishment of anything from 68 million to up to 132 million people around the world within the next decade
- Lastly, following the World Bank’s recent forecasts, the poverty reduction targets set for extreme poverty to fall below 3% by 2030 will not be reached
DevelopmentAid is the leading provider of business intelligence tools for those active in the development sector. It offers the ability to efficiently source funding opportunities (tenders and grants) by using keywords and advanced searches. A simple search showed that the ‘Poverty Reduction’ sector has had 399 tenders assigned to it since 2020 while the keyword ‘poverty’ has appeared in the title of 278 results.
