Progress in Reducing Extreme Poverty

Absolute or extreme poverty is having insufficient income or savings to meet basic human needs. The benchmark used at the moment for extreme poverty is the number of people or the percentage of a country's population living on less than US$1.90 per day, adjusted for purchasing power parity.

The latest data from the World Bank finds that less than ten per cent of the global population is living in extreme poverty and that substantial progress has been made over the last twenty years in lowering extreme poverty. But the benchmark itself is set at a very low level and there are always doubts about the accuracy of income data in many countries.

The chart below comes from work on extreme poverty from Our World in Data

Progress in reducing extreme poverty in Sub Saharan Africa has been much slower than in countries such as China.