Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2018

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FIGURE 1.8 Global Distribution of the Extreme Poor by Region and Country, 2015

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Source: PovcalNet (online analysis tool), http://iresearch.worldbank.org/PovcalNet/. World Bank, Washington, DC. Note: The inner circle is divided proportionally to each region’s share of the total population living in extreme poverty. The outer circle is similarly proportionate, but at the country level. The 10 countries with the most extreme poor in the world are listed.

quarter of global poverty. In the South Asia region, four out of ﬁve extreme poor reside in India. Despite a poverty rate of 13.4 percent, India’s large population of 1.3 billion results in a high number of extreme poor. To achieve the global poverty goal, progress in poverty reduction needs to continue in India. India’s placement as the country with the most poor people in the world is likely to change in the near future. In fact, projections indicate that Nigeria may already have overtaken India. The uncertainty about whether India or Nigeria is currently the country with the most poor people is in part simply because the countries are near a crossing point (having either recently switched or being on

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POVERTY AND SHARED PROSPERITY 2018

the verge of switching). But the uncertainty about when they have switched or will switch also reﬂects a series of difﬁcult measurement issues related to global poverty counts. Discussing some of these issues is useful because it can help convey a sense of the level of (im)precision of the poverty counts, and it allows for transparency in the strengths and weaknesses of the data and methods. In the case of Nigeria, there is one key concern with current poverty estimates. Both the 2015 estimate and the 2018 nowcast for Nigeria are based on household survey data collected in 2009. To estimate extreme poverty in 2015 for Nigeria, the survey mean from the 2009 data was increased at a rate equal to the

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Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2018

Published on Dec 20, 2018

World Bank Publications

"The World Bank Group has two overarching goals: End extreme poverty by 2030 and promote shared prosperity by boosting the incomes of the bottom 40 percent of the population in each economy. As this year’s Poverty and Shared Prosperity report documents, the world continues to make progress toward these goals. In 2015, approximately one-tenth of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty, and the incomes of the bottom 40 percent rose in 77 percent of economies studied. But success cannot be taken for granted. Poverty remains high in Sub- Saharan Africa, as well as in fragile and conflict-affected states. At the same time, most of the world’s poor now live in middle-income countries, which tend to have higher national poverty lines. This year’s report tracks poverty comparisons at two higher poverty thresholds—$3.20 and $5.50 per day—which are typical of standards in lower- and upper-middle-income countries. In addition, the report introduces a societal poverty line based on each economy’s median income o