World Bank: Global extreme poverty to hit new low in 2015

An Iraqi boy stands in the dump where he lives with his family.

(Image credit: Mario Tama/Getty Images)

published 5 October 2015

For the first time, this year the World Bank expects the number of people living in extreme poverty to fall below 10 percent of the world's population, to 702 million people.

The global poverty line was introduced by the World Bank in 1990, set at $1 a day. In 2008, it was adjusted to $1.25 a day, and after taking into consideration new data on cost of living in different countries, is now $1.90 a day, The Guardian reports. The World Bank projects that in 2015, 9.6 percent of the world's population will live in extreme poverty, down from 12.8 percent, or 902 million people, in 2012. "This is the best story in the world today," World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said. "These projections show us that we are the first generation in human history that can end extreme poverty."

In 1990, 1.9 billion people lived on less than $1.25 a day, compared to 836 million today, the UN says. The World Bank credits economic growth rates in emerging markets and education and health investments for the decrease in poverty rates. When it comes to the global poor, half live in Sub-Saharan Africa, the bank says, and by 2020, an estimated 50 percent of those living in extreme poverty will reside in countries that are torn apart by conflict and cut off from the rest of the world.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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