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30 Countries With Extreme Poverty

Rabeeta Abbas
12 min read

In This Article:

In this article, we discuss the 30 Countries With Extreme Poverty. If you would like to skip our detailed analysis of the subject, you can go directly to 10 Countries With Extreme Poverty.

The World Bank’s research about poverty, last updated in October 2023, finds that about eight percent of the global population lives in extreme poverty, which means that around 700 million people in the world survive on less than $2.15 per day. According to another Poverty and Shared Prosperity report published by the organization in 2022, almost a quarter of the global population lived below the lower-middle-income countries’ poverty line of $3.65. Moreover, almost half of the global population, precisely 47 percent, lived below the upper-middle-income countries’ poverty line of $6.85.

Although the scale of extreme global poverty remains vast, the number of extremely poor people has declined significantly over the past three decades. As reported by the World Bank, 2 billion people were living in extreme poverty in 1990, and from 1990 to 2019, the number was reduced to around 700 million. 

While poverty is decreasing on a global level, in some parts of the world, the poverty rate has been on the rise for the past few years. For example, in the United States, the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) rate, a poverty measure involving cash income and government benefits, was 12.4% in 2022, as reported by the U.S. Census Bureau. Compared to 2021, the rate increased by 4.6%, which can be explained by the catastrophic effects of COVID-19 on the job market worldwide. 

Apart from COVID-19, there have been, and are still, many causes leading to an increase in poverty in a country. One of them is wars. Wars and conflicts between countries have always come equipped with a great cost to the lives of civilians who are displaced and forced to live in extremely poor conditions. One such geopolitical conflict is going on between Israel and Palestine that has led to over 16 years of forced blockade in Gaza by Israel. According to UNRWA, 81.5% of the population in Gaza, a Palestinian district, is living below the poverty line as of 2020 data. The numbers have, of course, drastically increased in the wake of the ongoing genocide. Apart from armed conflicts and violent events, other prominent reasons for poverty in different countries worldwide are inflation, discrimination, and poor governance.

Economic Solutions to Poverty

Countries have tried many economic reforms to reduce the poverty rate as much as they can. In the short term, the government can apply direct provision policies for poor people, such as food assistance, housing assistance, and family tax credits. But if the country has a poor GDP (See: 50 Poorest Countries Based on GDP Per Capita (2023 PPP)), direct provision policies are usually ineffective here. Therefore, to solve poverty in the long run, a government has to use long-term policies, such as spending on education, making reforms that attract MNCs and other private companies to the country, and reducing barriers to investment and credit markets for poor people. 

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