Global economic growth could rebound next year but the number of people living in extreme poverty is expected to remain unchanged after a huge surge this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, the World Bank warned Tuesday.
The bank said three countries (India – 24%, Nigeria – 12%, DR Congo – 7%) with the highest shares of the world’s extremely poor are not projected to grow faster than their population, meaning that extreme poverty will remain at the elevated 2020 levels through 2021.
Before the pandemic, extreme poverty – defined as living on $1.90 per day – had been decreasing.
“Nigeria, India and the Democratic Republic of Congo — three countries which we project are home to more than a third of the world’s poor – are predicted to have per-capita growth rates in real GDP of –0.8 percent, 2.1 percent and 0.3 percent, respectively.
“With population growth rates of 2.6 percent, 1.0 percent and 3.1 percent, this is hardly enough for sustainable decreases in the poverty headcount,” the World Bank said in a blog.
Of the 176 million people expected to be pushed below the $3.20 per-day poverty line, two-thirds are in South Asia.
