This past week has seen new poverty estimates and projections from the World Bank (PovcalNet), UNDP, and ODI. This is on top of existing estimates from the Gates Foundation and Brookings.
The estimates broadly agree on the big picture. Extreme poverty is declining. But that decline is slowing, and many people who are already vulnerable risk being left behind even further. On the current trajectory, we will not eradicate extreme poverty by 2030; we will not even reduce it to the revised target of 3%.
How the data differs
These sets of numbers are arrived at differently. The World Bank updates are based on a more recent wave of household surveys; UNDP assesses the impact of poverty using the multi-dimensional poverty index (MPI) incorporating health, education and living standards.
Meanwhile, World Poverty Lab and ODI projections are based on World Bank data – but with some deviations in the methods and assumptions when projecting. World Poverty Labs use World Bank projections for population and income/consumption, but IMF data for aggregate country growth rate projections. ODI projections adopt one of the different scenarios suggested in this World Bank report. Brookings adopts the poverty estimates from the World Poverty Lab/World Poverty Clock – itself based on World Bank data.
The tracking is usually done with two complementary indicators: proportion of people living on below $1.90 (2011 constant USD) per person per day, and the absolute number of people who live below this same threshold – in other words, the poverty headcount.
Both are needed to get the full picture: where extreme poverty is concentrated in places with high population growth, for example, declining overall poverty rates might still leave us with the same or an increasing number of poor people.
What the new numbers tell us
The good news is that regardless of the measurement definition, source or methodology, extreme poverty continues to decline.
The proportion of the population in extreme poverty has fallen from 36% in 1990 to 8.6% in 2018 (8% by ODI estimates). Similarly, the poverty headcount has fallen from nearly 1.9 billion in 1990 to about 610-650 million in 2018.
