Introduction: A Persistence at Odds with Progress
Poverty is more than a lack of money. It is a multifaceted violation of human dignity that limits choices, opportunities, and a sense of security. While the international community has pursued ambitious goals like the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), shocks such as the Covid-19 pandemic remind us that gains can unravel quickly for the most vulnerable. This article highlights those left behind in the ongoing fight against poverty, examining both monetary and non-monetary dimensions and what they mean for real lives.
Monetary Poverty: The Numbers Tell a Complex Story
Over the past decades, the world made notable progress in reducing extreme poverty. In 1981, 47.1% of people lived on less than $3 per day; by 2018, that figure fell to 11.2%. The pandemic reversed some of this momentum: in 2020, the global extreme poverty rate rose to 11.4%, adding roughly 35 million people in extreme poverty compared with two years earlier. By 2024, the world had 839.2 million people living in extreme poverty (about 10.3% of the population).
Beyond the extreme line, higher thresholds—such as $4.2 and $8.3 per day—also show where progress stalled or slowed. The pandemic interrupted declines at these levels as well, though not as severely as extreme poverty. In 2024, 1.5 billion people lived on less than $4.2 per day and 3.8 billion on less than $8.3 per day, underscoring the broad reach of deprivation in a world where many live in middle-income contexts yet remain financially fragile.
Regional Realities: Concentrations of Poverty and the Shock Effect
Poverty is not evenly distributed. Sub-Saharan Africa bears the heaviest burden at the lower thresholds: in 2024, its extreme poverty rate stood at 46.0%, and 89.0% of people there lived on less than $8.3 per day. In contrast, Europe and Central Asia, and North America reported extreme poverty rates below 1%. These disparities are paired with where the poor live: Sub-Saharan Africa, home to about 15.9% of the world’s population, accounted for roughly 70.7% of those in extreme poverty in 2024 and about 30.5% living under the $8.3 threshold.
The data also reveal a stubborn fact: even as many countries escape low-income status, a cluster of 22 nations has remained low-income since the late 1980s, resisting the broader global ascent. In these places, GDP per capita has stagnated, leaving households vulnerable to every new shock.
Monetary Working Poverty: When Jobs Aren’t Enough
Working poverty describes people who, despite holding jobs, cannot lift their families out of poverty. It reflects not only wages but job quality, including pay, benefits, and working conditions, as well as household composition. Global working poverty has declined—from 37.4% in 1991 to around 6.9% in 2024 when measured against the extreme poverty line of $2.15 per day, and from 56.6% to 17.5% at the $3.65 per day line. Yet this improvement masks uneven realities: employment is less protective in the poorest regions, and many workers must hold multiple jobs to cover basic needs.
In many lower-income countries, holding a single job is often the norm because job quality and pay are insufficient to escape poverty. In contrast, higher-income regions show a stronger relationship between multiple jobs and poverty reduction, highlighting both the necessity and limitations of diversification in earnings. This gap underscores the persistent vulnerability of the world’s poorest workers, who must navigate inadequate social protections and volatile labor markets.
Beyond Money: The Multidimensional View of Poverty
Monetary measures are crucial, but they do not capture the full lived reality of deprivation. Access to education, health, clean water, sanitation, electricity, and reliable infrastructure shapes livelihoods in ways that monetary indicators alone cannot. National poverty lines—adjusted for local costs and consumption patterns—often reveal disparities that international benchmarks miss. A true poverty analysis therefore relies on a mix of measures to reflect the multidimensional nature of deprivation.
Complementary indicators illuminate gaps in social protection, access to services, and resilience against shocks. They help identify who remains behind and why, shaping policies that can reach beyond income thresholds to improve schooling, health outcomes, and safety nets for the most vulnerable.
Left Behind: The Human Face of Global Poverty
Even as overall poverty rates decline, certain places, groups, and workers bear a disproportionate burden. The 22 persistently low-income countries, regions with high extreme poverty rates, and working poor in fragile economies illustrate the human cost of stalled progress. These realities call for targeted investments in jobs with decent pay, robust social protection, quality public services, and resilient infrastructure that can withstand future shocks.
What Next? Policies and Pathways to Leave No One Behind
Ending poverty requires a dual focus: accelerating monetary gains where possible and strengthening the social fabric that protects people when markets falter. This means expanding access to education and health care, raising living wages, ensuring social protection programs reach the unprotected, and improving labor market quality. It also means tailor-made national strategies that reflect local costs of living and cultural contexts while maintaining a global commitment to leave no one behind.
Conclusion
The fight against poverty is not merely about lifting numbers; it is about restoring dignity, opportunity, and security for every person. By centering the most vulnerable—“the forgotten” in policy design—we can translate progress into enduring change that outlasts shocks and fosters a more inclusive future for all.
