EQUALS: Want to end poverty? Then reduce inequality

The World Bank have published revised poverty numbers, and the findings are pretty dramatic. They now think that there are 125 million more people living in extreme poverty in 2022 than they did previously- that extreme poverty is 10.5% of the world’s population, as opposed to their previous estimate of 9%. That is the equivalent to the entire population of Japan.

It was already known that poverty had shot up during Covid-19, and then begun to come down again, but very slowly. These new estimates show that the decline is even slower than originally projected, with extreme poverty in 2022 basically at the same level as it was in 2019. This then impacts on the World Bank forecasts for where poverty levels are in 2025- revised upwards from 8.5% of humanity to 9.9% of humanity- or one in ten people.

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