Data Viz: Global poverty is declining — and few people know it

In this post, we wanted to visually illustrate extreme poverty rates over time. We recognize that recent publications delve deeper into falling extreme poverty rates, why these may occur, and some of the challenges that persist even when the statistics seem to paint a positive picture.

Most people, especially in rich countries but also in middle-income countries, believe that global extreme poverty has increased in the last few decades.

However, across world regions, the share of people living in extreme poverty (< 1.90 int.-$ per day) has fallen sharply in recent years.

In fact, global poverty has declined irrespective of which poverty line we choose.

The decline in poverty rates was so steep that also the absolute number of people living in extreme poverty also fell, even while the world population was growing.

Data source: Our World in Data (based on PovcalNet by the World Bank).