The COVID-19 pandemic could push an additional 150 million people into extreme poverty by 2021
"Eight out of ten “new poor” will be in middle-income countries"
"WASHINGTON, 7 October 2020 – For the first time in more than twenty years, the global extreme poverty rate is expected to rise in 2020, the World Bank projects, highlighting the aggravating consequences of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on poverty reduction, already slowed by conflict and climate change."
"According to the biennial Poverty and Shared Prosperity report published today, the pandemic could push between 88 and 115 million additional people into extreme poverty this year, and up to 150 million by 2021, depending on the severity of the economic recession. Extreme poverty, defined as living on less than $1.90 a day, is thus expected to affect between 9.1% and 9.4% of the world’s population in 2020, a setback to around the 9.2% rate recorded in 2017. Without the upheavals caused by the pandemic across the world, this figure should have fallen to 7.9% in 2020."
"“The pandemic and the accompanying global recession will push more than 1% of the world’s population into extreme poverty, stresses World Bank Group President David Malpass.”"
"In the absence of swift, significant and substantial measures, the combination of the COVID-19 pandemic and the burden of conflict and climate change will put the goal of ending poverty by 2030 out of reach, says the World Bank, which forecasts a global poverty rate that could reach around 7% by that date."
"PRESS RELEASE NO: 2021/024/DEC-GPV
07 October 2020"
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Quotations from English-language sources are translated back here from the French.
