Unic Press UK: In 2015, the number of the world’s extremely poor people was 736 million, and a half of this staggering number, 368 million, lived in 5 countries, the World Bank said in a report ‘Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2018: Piecing Together the Poverty Puzzle’ published in January 2019.
“Half of the people living in extreme poverty in 2015 can be found in just five countries. The most populous countries in South Asia (Bangladesh and India) and Sub-Saharan Africa (Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, and Nigeria) are the five topping the list of countries with the greatest number of extreme poor. With the cautions in mind that consumption in 2015 for both India and Nigeria is based on projections, not direct enumerations of consumption from recent household surveys, the nowcast for 2018 suggests that Nigeria is now the country with the most poor people in the world.”
The World Bank’s report further illustrates that, in 2030, extreme poverty in India and Bangladesh would be approaching zero, but would remain quite elevated in Nigeria, DRC, and Ethiopia.
To make a significant progress towards reducing extreme poverty (those living on less than $1.90 a day) to less than 3 percent by 2030, there has to be large reductions in poverty in five countries – Bangladesh, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, and Nigeria, the World Bank wrote.
The poverty rate is the percentage of the population living on less than the International Poverty Line (IPL) of US$1.90 in 2011 purchasing power parity dollars.
