Poverty, Prosperity, and Planet Report 2024

Poverty, Prosperity, and Planet Report

Pathways Out of the Polycrisis

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The World Bank Group has set a clear mission: ending poverty and boosting shared prosperity on a livable planet. This report offers the first post-pandemic assessment of global progress toward these interlinked goals, and explores potential pathways out of today's polycrisis - an environment where multiple and interconnected challenges are impacting the world simultaneously. The report's messages are presented around progress in terms of the goals, pathways to move forward, and priorities depending on where countries stand on the interlinked goals.

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Global poverty reduction has slowed to a near standstill

Today, almost 700 million people (8.5 percent of the global population) live in extreme poverty - on less than $2.15 per day. Progress has stalled amid low growth, setbacks due to COVID-19, and increased fragility. Poverty rates in low-income countries are higher than before the pandemic.

Around 3.5 billion people (44 percent of the global population) remain poor by a standard that is more relevant for upper middle-income countries ($6.85 per day), and the number or people living on less than this standard has barely changed since the 1990s due to population growth.

In 2024, Sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 16 percent of the world’s population, but 67 percent of the people living in extreme poverty. Two thirds of the world’s population in extreme poverty live in Sub-Saharan Africa, rising to three quarters when including all fragile and conflict-affected countries. About 72 percent of the world’s population in extreme poverty live in countries that are eligible to receive assistance from the International Development Association (IDA).

The number of people living on less than $6.85 per day has remained unchanged over the past 30 years

Based on the current trajectory, 622 million people (7.3 percent of the global population) are projected to live in extreme poverty in 2030. This means, about 69 million people are projected escape extreme poverty between 2024 and 2030 compared to about 150 million who did so between 2013 and 2019. In addition, 3.4 billion people (nearly 40 percent of the world’s population) will likely live on less than $6.85 per day.

If growth does not accelerate and become more inclusive, it will take decades to eradicate extreme poverty and more than a century to lift people above the $6.85 per day poverty line.

Improving labor incomes by creating more and better jobs and investing in education, infrastructure, and basic services will be important to enable people living in poverty to benefit more from and contribute to growth, and to enhance their resilience amid increasing shocks.

Improvements in shared prosperity have stalled

Average income growth alone is not a sufficient marker of development, so it is important to track shared prosperity, a measure of the inclusiveness of growth. The Global Prosperity Gap, a new indicator of shared prosperity used by the World Bank, tracks how far the world is, on average, from a threshold of $25 per person per day with a specific emphasis on the incomes of the poorest.

Progress in reducing the Prosperity Gap stalled since the pandemic, highlighting a slowdown in inclusive income growth over this period.

High inequality can reflect a lack of opportunities for socioeconomic mobility, which can further hinder prospects for inclusive growth and poverty reduction over time.

Around one-fifth of the world’s population lives in countries with high inequality. Today, high levels of income or consumption inequality are concentrated among countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Faster and more inclusive growth is needed to accelerate progress in achieving shared prosperity. At current growth rates, a typical upper-middle-income country will need 100 years to close the Prosperity Gap. The number of years needed can be reduced if income growth is substantially faster or more inclusive. Countries can achieve the same level of prosperity with less growth and a decrease in the level of inequality.

Climate change poses a fundamental risk to poverty and inequality reduction

Today, one in five people are at risk of an extreme weather event in their lifetime. This means they are likely to face severe setbacks in their livelihoods, significantly hindering poverty reduction efforts.

People’s risks to climate hazards are expected to increase unless resilience is strengthened and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions decline.

Protecting people from extreme weather events requires acting on two fronts: (i) lowering vulnerability by enhancing risk management; and (ii) preventing the escalation of future climate hazards by accelerating transformations to reduce the emissions intensiveness of growth. 

Eradicating poverty and boosting shared prosperity on a livable planet requires managing trade-offs.

To inform decisions it is important to understand the trade-off between growing incomes and lowering GHG emissions, find ways to scale up synergistic policies that can help advance on multiple fronts or reduce trade-offs, and manage short-term transition costs to specific groups and communities.

Priorities should consider where countries stand on the interlinked goals.

  • Low-income settings: prioritize poverty reduction by delivering economic growth and reduce multidimensional poverty.
  • Middle-income countries: Prioritize income growth that reduces vulnerability and synergies to reduce the carbon intensity of growth.
  • Upper-middle- and high-income countries account for four-fifths of global GHG emissions. These countries need to act fast in transitioning to low-carbon intense economies while managing transition costs.

Fostering international cooperation and closing financing gaps for sustainable development is critical to enable the transition toward more sustainable, low-carbon, and resilient economies. Achieving a world free of poverty on a livable planet is possible but requires serious and immediate efforts.

Advancing on the interlinked goals requires a solid foundation of evidence

Data is the infrastructure for policy and should therefore be prioritized. The analysis presented in this report relies to a large extent on household survey data. While data availability has improved in many countries, less than half of the countries in the world had a household survey available for poverty monitoring in 2020 or later. This reflects issues of coverage and accessibility.

The expanded vision of the World Bank, with a new focus on shared prosperity and the inclusion of a livable planet, calls for substantial improvements to the quality of data. New indicators require good coverage of the entire global distribution of income and consumption, detailed spatial data on exposure to climate-related risks, and multidimensional poverty.

In light of the data revolution, significant investments are needed to modernize surveys, and accelerate the integration and standardization of various sources of data. At the same time, efforts should focus on leveraging machine learning and artificial intelligence models to close data gaps and enable more timely monitoring.