Global efforts to eradicate extreme poverty have faced significant setbacks by the COVID-19 pandemic and a series of major shocks during 2020-22. The pandemic caused extreme poverty to increase in 2020 for the first time in decades, reversing global progress by three years. Recovery has been uneven, with low-income countries lagging behind. With the ongoing poly-crisis, ending poverty by 2030 appears increasingly out of reach, particularly in regions that lack the fiscal capacity to cope with economic stresses.
Target 1.1: Extreme poverty levels returned to pre-pandemic levels in most countries by 2022, except in low-income countries where recovery has been slower. In 2022, 9% of the world's population or 712 million people were living in extreme poverty, an increase of 23 million people compared to 2019. If current trends continue, 590 million people, or 6.9% of the world's population will still live in extreme poverty by 2030.
The share of the world's working population living in poverty has steadily decreased, from 8.4% in 2015 to 6.9% in 2023. However, nearly 241 million workers globally were still living in extreme poverty in 2023 and little positive change is expected in 2024.
Target 1.2: Though data covering the period of COVID-19 are limited, the pandemic is likely to have slowed progress made in halving national poverty rates. Given historical trends, less than 30% of countries worldwide will have halved poverty by 2030.
Target 1.3: In 2023, only 28.2% of child globally received child cash benefits, compared to 22.1% in 2015, leaving 1.4 billion children aged 0-15 without coverage. To guarantee at least a basic level of social protection for all children, upper- and lower-middle-income countries would need to invest an additional US$98.1 billion and US$88.8 billion, respectively, while low-income countries would require an additional US$59.6 billion.
Target 1.5: Economic losses due to disasters remained stubbornly high in recent years and showed no sign of alleviation. Between 2015 and 2022 direct economic loss has been reported to exceed more than $115 billion per year worldwide, which amounted to 0.3% of the GDP of the reporting countries.
Target 1.a: Data from approximately 100 countries show that the proportion of total government spending on essential services (education, health and social protection) is approximately 50%, with an average of 60% amongst advanced economies and 40% amongst emerging market and developing economies. While this indicator trends slightly upward for both groups over the past two decades, the gap between them remains stable at approximately 20 percentage points.
