Manila: Nearly 700 million people around the world are classified as living in extreme poverty, surviving on less than USD2.15 per day per person. This stark figure underscores the ongoing challenge of poverty eradication, a mission emphasized globally with the UN’s declaration of October 17 as the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, established in 1992.

According to Philippines News Agency, a UN report highlighted that global extreme poverty had been decreasing from 1990 to 2019. However, the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent crises have led to the largest global rise in poverty in decades, halting progress since 2019. Almost half of the global population, particularly in regions like South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, lives below poverty levels seen in many upper-middle-income countries.

Globally, about 1 billion people subsist on incomes between USD2.15 and USD3.65 per day, with nearly half of the world’s population managing on less than USD6.85 daily. The World Bank’s 2024 Global Poverty Report reveals that approximately 8.5 percent of the world’s population lives in extreme poverty, equating to roughly 700 million individuals.

Meanwhile, around 3.5 billion people globally earn less than USD6.85 a day, a threshold considered as poverty in middle-income nations. Despite these grim statistics, regions such as East Asia, the Pacific, and South Asia have made significant progress in reducing poverty over the last 25 years.

Projections for 2030 indicate that about 7.3 percent of the global population will remain in extreme poverty, with only 69 million people anticipated to rise above this level. According to the online media platform Visual Capitalist, using data from the IMF’s World Economic Outlook report, most of the world’s poorest countries, in terms of per capita GDP, are located in Sub-Saharan Africa. South Sudan is identified as the poorest country, with a per capita GDP of USD251.