Latest poverty estimates show 9.2% of global population lived below $1.90-a-day international poverty line in 2017.
The World Bank on Friday said global poverty decreased by less than half percentage point per year between 2015 and 2017, raising concerns about reaching the 3% target by 2030 without substantial policy action.
"Additional global challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and conflict are likely to push this goal even farther away," according to the global financial body's blog.
The latest poverty estimates show that 9.2% of the global population lived below the $1.90-a-day international poverty line in 2017, it added. It noted this amounts to 689 million people living in extreme poverty, 28 million fewer than in 2016 and 52 million fewer than in 2015.
Despite this fall in the number of poor, the recently published poverty report paints a sobering picture of progress toward the 2030 goal of reducing global poverty to below 3%.
The World Bank Group works to end poverty in several ways:
Funding projects that can have transformational impacts on communities
Collecting and analyzing the critical data and evidence needed to target these programs to reach the poorest and most vulnerable
Helping governments create more inclusive, effective policies that can benefit entire populations and lay the groundwork for prosperity for future generations.
Some examples:
Grow
Cambodia has achieved remarkable progress in reducing poverty and boosting shared prosperity, but key reforms are needed to sustain pro-poor growth. The World Bank is supporting Cambodia to help address the country’s challenges of limited economic diversification, rapidly increasing urbanization, human capital deficiencies, and infrastructure gaps.
Mexico has experienced high income inequality and concentration of poverty in a few states. The World Bank Group has supported Mexico’s efforts to develop a more inclusive, effective, and integrated social protection system including relaunching a conditional cash transfer program to help improve access to higher education and formal employment.
In one of India’s poorest states, Bihar, a program financed by the World Bank has transformed livelihoods by mobilizing almost 10 million rural women into self-help groups and granting them access to finance and markets to start and expand their businesses.
Invest
A pilot program in Ecuador used text messages to relay information and encouragement to caregivers in an impoverished region of the country and saw a significant improvement in the nutrition and health of children.
Since 2007, a team of experts from the World Bank has been helping Kenya strengthen statistical capacity by reshaping its National Bureau of Statistics. With World Bank’s support, the bureau implemented a range of surveys to update key indicators of official statistics and improved the data ecosystem. The project is funded by $50 million from the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA).
In-depth maps in countries such as Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Croatia, Republic of Serbia, and Vietnam show where economic diversity and gaps in services exist within a country. This, as part of the poverty assessment process, helps policymakers better target policies and programs to reach and benefit the poor.
Insure
Yemen’s high malnutrition rates have drawn global attention, highlighting the impact the country’s five-and-half-year civil war has had on its population. The Emergency Crisis Response Project gives pregnant women and women with children under the age of five money to buy food and teaches them about child nutrition. It has been able to reach more than 165,000 pregnant or lactating women and 175,000 children so far.
Conflict-affected communities in Mindanao are among the poorest in the Philippines, suffering from poor infrastructure and lack of basic services. The World Bank along with other partners have aimed to enhance access to services and economic opportunities and build social cohesion. These projects have help build water systems, community centers, sanitation facilities, access roads, post-harvest facilities, and farming and fishing equipment, benefiting 650,000 people in 284 villages in a decade.
An innovative series of rapid survey methodologies were pioneered in Somalia, one of the poorest countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. The surveys overcame significant security and implementation obstacles to yield the most comprehensive analysis of the welfare of the Somali people in decades and is now being used in other countries.