Progress in poverty eradication was halted by COVID-19. In the three decades prior, more than 1 billion people had been lifted out of extreme poverty. Since 2015, however, the pace of poverty reduction has begun to slow, and the impact of the Ukraine war, in addition to the pandemic, has made it significantly more difficult to achieve the global goal of eradicating extreme poverty by 2030.

The World Bank's Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2022: Correcting Course provides a comprehensive analysis of the global poverty impact of COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine, and presents a series of recommendations for low- and It proposes comprehensive policy reforms to support growth and development, which are prerequisites for achieving poverty reduction in low- and middle-income countries.

According to the report, under the pandemic, extreme poverty rose from 8.4% in 2019 to 9.3% in 2020; by the end of 2020, more than 70 million new people will be pushed into extreme poverty, representing 700 million people worldwide. The year 2020 is a historic turning point in that global income levels have shifted from a trend of convergence to a trend of discrete income levels. Poor countries experienced income loss twice as fast as developed countries, and for the first time in decades, income inequality widened globally.

The road to recovery from COVID-19 has not been smooth. Climate shocks and conflict-related food and energy price increases have impeded recovery, and 685 million people are expected to be living in extreme poverty at the end of 2022, the second-worst performance in terms of poverty reduction in the past 20 years, after 2020. The report projects that 574 million people, or 7% of the world's population, will remain poor in 2030, a departure from the global goal of reducing the poverty rate to 3%.

In the face of this setback, the course needs to be corrected. The report emphasizes the need for comprehensive policy actions that benefit people at all income levels, especially the poorest, to reduce global poverty and make progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals.

Reference
World Bank. 2022. Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2022 : Correcting Course. Washington, DC : World Bank. Washington, DC : World Bank. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/37739 

Contributor: IIYAMA Miyuki (Information Program)