In 2025, nearly 11.7 percent of the world population in extreme poverty, with the poverty threshold at 2.15 U.S. dollars a day, lived in Nigeria. Moreover, the Democratic Republic of the Congo accounted for around 11.7 percent of the global population in extreme poverty. Other African nations with a large poor population were Tanzania, Mozambique, and Madagascar. Poverty levels remain high despite the forecast decline Poverty is a widespread issue across Africa. Around 429 million people on the continent were living below the extreme poverty line of 2.15 U.S. dollars a day in 2024. Since the continent had approximately 1.4 billion inhabitants, roughly a third of Africa’s population was in extreme poverty that year. Mozambique, Malawi, Central African Republic, and Niger had Africa’s highest extreme poverty rates based on the 2.15 U.S. dollars per day extreme poverty indicator (updated from 1.90 U.S. dollars in September 2022). Although the levels of poverty on the continent are forecast to decrease in the coming years, Africa will remain the poorest region compared to the rest of the world. Prevalence of poverty and malnutrition across Africa Multiple factors are linked to increased poverty. Regions with critical situations of employment, education, health, nutrition, war, and conflict usually have larger poor populations. Consequently, poverty tends to be more prevalent in least-developed and developing countries worldwide. For similar reasons, rural households also face higher poverty levels. In 2024, the extreme poverty rate in Africa stood at around 45 percent among the rural population, compared to seven percent in urban areas. Together with poverty, malnutrition is also widespread in Africa. Limited access to food leads to low health conditions, increasing the poverty risk. At the same time, poverty can determine inadequate nutrition. Almost 38.3 percent of the global undernourished population lived in Africa in 2022.

Out of all OECD countries, Cost Rica had the highest poverty rate as of 2022, at over 20 percent. The country with the second highest poverty rate was the United States, with 18 percent. On the other end of the scale, Czechia had the lowest poverty rate at 6.4 percent, followed by Denmark.

The significance of the OECD

The OECD, or the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, was founded in 1948 and is made up of 38 member countries. It seeks to improve the economic and social well-being of countries and their populations. The OECD looks at issues that impact people’s everyday lives and proposes policies that can help to improve the quality of life.

Poverty in the United States

In 2022, there were nearly 38 million people living below the poverty line in the U.S.. About one fourth of the Native American population lived in poverty in 2022, the most out of any ethnicity. In addition, the rate was higher among young women than young men. It is clear that poverty in the United States is a complex, multi-faceted issue that affects millions of people and is even more complex to solve.

The most common poverty measures, including that used by the OECD, focus on income based approaches. One of the most common measures of income poverty is the proportion of households with income less than half median equivalised disposable household income (which is set as the poverty line); this is a relative income poverty measure as poverty is measured by reference to the income of others rather than in some absolute sense. Australia has one of the highest household disposable incomes in the world, which means that an Australian relative income poverty line is set at a high level of income compared to most other countries.

OECD statistics on Australian poverty 2015-16 (based on ABS Survey of Income and Housing data and applying a poverty line of 50% of median income) determined the Australian poverty rate was over 25% before taxes and transfers, but falls around 12% after taxes and transfers. Though measuring poverty through application of solely an income measure is not considered comprehensive for an Australian context, however, it does demonstrate that the Australian welfare system more than halves the number of Australians that would otherwise be considered as at risk of living in poverty under that measure.
It is important to consider a range of indicators of persistent disadvantage to understand poverty and hardship and its multidimensional nature. Different indicators point to different dimensions of poverty. While transient poverty is a problem, the experience of persistent poverty is of deeper concern, particularly where families experience intergenerational disadvantage and long-term welfare reliance. HILDA data from the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research shows the Distribution of number of years in poverty 2001–2015. The figure focuses on the longer term experience of working age adults and shows that while people do fall into poverty, only a small proportion of people are persistently poor.

In 2023, the around 11.1 percent of the population was living below the national poverty line in the United States. Poverty in the United StatesAs shown in the statistic above, the poverty rate among all people living in the United States has shifted within the last 15 years. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) defines poverty as follows: “Absolute poverty measures poverty in relation to the amount of money necessary to meet basic needs such as food, clothing, and shelter. The concept of absolute poverty is not concerned with broader quality of life issues or with the overall level of inequality in society.” The poverty rate in the United States varies widely across different ethnic groups. American Indians and Alaska Natives are the ethnic group with the most people living in poverty in 2022, with about 25 percent of the population earning an income below the poverty line. In comparison to that, only 8.6 percent of the White (non-Hispanic) population and the Asian population were living below the poverty line in 2022. Children are one of the most poverty endangered population groups in the U.S. between 1990 and 2022. Child poverty peaked in 1993 with 22.7 percent of children living in poverty in that year in the United States. Between 2000 and 2010, the child poverty rate in the United States was increasing every year; however,this rate was down to 15 percent in 2022. The number of people living in poverty in the U.S. varies from state to state. Compared to California, where about 4.44 million people were living in poverty in 2022, the state of Minnesota had about 429,000 people living in poverty.

Peru PE: Income Share Held by Highest 20% data was reported at 48.900 % in 2016. This records an increase from the previous number of 48.800 % for 2015. Peru PE: Income Share Held by Highest 20% data is updated yearly, averaging 54.050 % from Dec 1997 to 2016, with 20 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 60.400 % in 1999 and a record low of 48.500 % in 2014. Peru PE: Income Share Held by Highest 20% data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by World Bank. The data is categorized under Global Database’s Peru – Table PE.World Bank.WDI: Poverty. Percentage share of income or consumption is the share that accrues to subgroups of population indicated by deciles or quintiles. Percentage shares by quintile may not sum to 100 because of rounding.; ; World Bank, Development Research Group. Data are based on primary household survey data obtained from government statistical agencies and World Bank country departments. Data for high-income economies are from the Luxembourg Income Study database. For more information and methodology, please see PovcalNet (http://iresearch.worldbank.org/PovcalNet/index.htm).; ; The World Bank’s internationally comparable poverty monitoring database now draws on income or detailed consumption data from more than one thousand six hundred household surveys across 164 countries in six regions and 25 other high income countries (industrialized economies). While income distribution data are published for all countries with data available, poverty data are published for low- and middle-income countries and countries eligible to receive loans from the World Bank (such as Chile) and recently graduated countries (such as Estonia) only. See PovcalNet (http://iresearch.worldbank.org/PovcalNet/WhatIsNew.aspx) for definitions of geographical regions and industrialized countries.

Abstract

The 2018 Dhaka Low Income Area Gender, Inclusion, and Poverty (DIGNITY) survey attempts to fill in the data and knowledge gaps on women's economic empowerment in urban areas, specifically the factors that constrain women in slums and low-income neighborhoods from engaging in the labor market and supplying their labor to wage earning or self-employment. While an array of national-level datasets has collected a wide spectrum of information, they rarely comprise all of the information needed to study the drivers of Female Labor Force Participation (FLFP). This data gap is being filled by the primary data collection of the specialized DIGNITY survey; it is representative of poor urban areas and is specifically designed to address these limitations. The DIGNITY survey collected information from 1,300 urban households living in poor areas of Dhaka in 2018 on a range of issues that affect FLFP as identified through the literature. These range from household composition and demographic characteristics to socioeconomic characteristics such as detailed employment history and income (including locational data and travel details); and from technical and educational attributes to issues of time use, migration history, and attitudes and perceptions.

The DIGNITY survey was designed to shed light on poverty, economic empowerment, and livelihood in urban areas of Bangladesh. It has two main modules: the traditional household module (in which the head of household is interviewed on basic information about the household); and the individual module, in which two respondents from each household are interviewed individually. In the second module, two persons - one male and one female from each household, usually the main couple, are selected for the interview. The survey team deployed one male and one female interviewer for each household, so that the gender of the interviewers matched that of the respondents. Collecting economic data directly from a female and male household member, rather than just the head of the household (who tend to be men in most cases), was a key feature of the DIGNITY survey.

Geographic coverage

The DIGNITY survey is representative of low-income areas and slums of the Dhaka City Corporations (North and South, from here on referred to as Dhaka CCs), and an additional low-income site from the Greater Dhaka Statistical Metropolitan Area (SMA).

Analysis unit

• Household
• Individual

Kind of data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure

The sampling procedure followed a two-stage stratification design. The major features include the following steps (they are discussed in more detail in a copy of the study's report and the sampling document located in "External Resources"):

FIRST STAGE: Selection of the PSUs

Low-income primary sampling units (PSUs) were defined as nonslum census enumeration areas (EAs), in which the small-sample area estimate of the poverty rate is higher than 8 percent (using the 2011 Bangladesh Poverty Map). The sampling frame for these low-income areas in the Dhaka City Corporations (CCs) and Greater Dhaka is based on the population census of 2011. For the Dhaka CCs, all low-income census EAs formed the sampling frame. In the Greater Dhaka area, the frame was formed by all low-income census EAs in specific thanas (i.e. administrative unit in Bangladesh) where World Bank project were located.

Three strata were used for sampling the low-income EAs. These strata were defined based on the poverty head-count ratios. The first stratum encompasses EAs with a poverty headcount ratio between 8 and 10 percent; the second stratum between 11 and 14 percent; and the third stratum, those exceeding 15 percent.

Slums were defined as informal settlements that were listed in the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics' slum census from 2013/14. This census was used as sampling frame of the slum areas. Only slums in the Dhaka City Corporations are included. Again, three strata were used to sample the slums. This time the strata were based on the size of the slums. The first stratum comprises slums of 50 to 75 households; the second 76 to 99 households; and the third, 100 or more households. Small slums with fewer than 50 households were not included in the sampling frame. Very small slums were included in the low-income neighborhood selection if they are in a low-income area.

Altogether, the DIGNITY survey collected data from 67 PSUs.

SECOND STAGE: Selection of the Households

In each sampled PSU a complete listing of households was done to form the frame for the second stage of sampling: the selection of households. When the number of households in a PSU was very large, smaller sections of the neighborhood were identified, and one section was randomly selected to be listed. The listing data collected information on the demographics of the household to determine whether a household fell into one of the three categories that were used to stratify the household sample:

i) households with both working-age male and female members; ii) households with only a working-age female; iii) households with only a working-age male.

Households were selected from each stratum with the predetermined ratio of 16:3:1. In some cases there were not enough households in categories (ii) and (iii) to stick to this ratio; in this case all of the households in the category were sampled, and additional households were selected from the first category to bring the total number of households sampled in each PSU to 20.

The total sample consisted of 1,300 households (2,378 individuals).

Sampling deviation

The sampling for 1300 households was planned after the listing exercise. During the field work, about 115 households (8.8 percent) could not be interviewed due to household refusal or absence. These households were replaced with reserved households in the sample.

Mode of data collection

Computer Assisted Personal Interview [capi]

Research instrument

The questionnaires for the survey were developed by the World Bank, with assistance from the survey firm, DATA. Comments were incorporated following the pilot tests and practice session/pretest.

Cleaning operations

Collected data was entered into a computer by using the customized MS Access data input software developed by Data Analysis and Technical Assistance (DATA). Once data entry was completed, two different techniques were employed to check consistency and validity of data as follows:

1. Five (5%) percent of the filled-in questionnaire was checked against entered data to measure the transmission error or typos, and;
2. A logical consistency checking technique was employed to identify inconsistencies using SPSS and or STATA software.

Contains data from the World Bank's data portal. There is also a consolidated country dataset on HDX.

For the 70 percent of the world's poor who live in rural areas, agriculture is the main source of income and employment. But depletion and degradation of land and water pose serious challenges to producing enough food and other agricultural products to sustain livelihoods here and meet the needs of urban populations. Data presented here include measures of agricultural inputs, outputs, and productivity compiled by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization.

Abstract

Since 1992, Kenya has been a generous host of refugees and asylum seekers, a population which today exceeds 500,000 people. The Kakuma Refugee Camps have long been among the largest hosting sites (about 40% of the total refugees in Kenya), and have become even larger in recent years, with an estimated 67 percent of the current refugee population arriving in the past five years. In 2015, UNHCR, the Government of Kenya, and partners established Kalobeyei Settlement, located 40 kilometers north of Kakuma, to reduce the population burden on the other camps and facilitate a shift towards an area-based development model that addresses the longer term prospects of both refugees and the host community. The refugee population makes up a significant share of the local population (an estimated 40 percent at the district level) and economy, engendering both positive and negative impacts on local Kenyans. While Kenya has emerged as a leader in measuring the impacts of forced displacement, refugees are not systematically included in the national household surveys that serve as the primary tools for measuring and monitoring poverty, labor markets and other welfare indicators at a country-wide level. As a result, comparison of poverty and vulnerability between refugees, host communities and nationals remains difficult. Initiated jointly by UNHCR and the World Bank, this survey replicates the preceding Kalobeyei SES (2018), designed to address these shortcomings and support the wider global vision laid out by the Global Refugee Compact and the Sustainable Development Goals. Data was collected in October 2019 to December 2019, covering about 2,122 households.

Geographic coverage

Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya

Analysis unit

Household and individual

Universe

Sampled household survey, representative of all refugees living in Kakuma refugee camp.

Kind of data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure

The Kakuma SES utilized a two-stage sampling process where the first stage samples dwellings, stratified by subcamp, followed by second-stage households. Dwellings were drawn as the primary sampling unit (PSU) from an up-to-date list of all dwellings in the camp provided by UNHCR shelter unit, which serves as the sampling frame. The sample was drawn with explicit stratification for the four Kakuma subcamps, with uniform probability for Kakuma 1-3. For Kakuma 4, the selection probability was slightly increased because of higher expected nonresponse

The survey was designed to accurately estimate socioeconomic indicators such as the poverty rate for group sof the population that have at least a 50 percent representation in the population. A 3 percent margin of error at a confidence level of 95 percent is considered accurate, resulting in a sample size of 2,122. Considering a 10 percent nonresponse rate, the target sample size was 2,347.

Sampling deviation

None

Mode of data collection

Computer Assisted Personal Interview [capi]

Research instrument

The following sections are included: household roster, education, employment, household characteristics, assets, access, vulnerabilities, social cohesion, coping mechanism, displacement and cunsumption and expenditure.

Cleaning operations

The dataset presented here has undergone light checking, cleaning and restructuring (data may still contain errors) as well as anonymization (includes removal of direct identifiers and sensitive variables, recoding and local suppression).

Response rate

The SES has a non-response rate of about 5%, mainly due to absence of respondent and refusal to participate in the survey

Contains data from the World Bank's data portal. There is also a consolidated country dataset on HDX.

For the 70 percent of the world's poor who live in rural areas, agriculture is the main source of income and employment. But depletion and degradation of land and water pose serious challenges to producing enough food and other agricultural products to sustain livelihoods here and meet the needs of urban populations. Data presented here include measures of agricultural inputs, outputs, and productivity compiled by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization.