A Goal Derailed: Charting the Course of Global Poverty from SDG Progress to Pandemic Reversal

Executive Summary

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, launched in 2015, placed the eradication of poverty in all its forms at its apex. Sustainable Development Goal 1 (SDG 1) represented a global consensus to not only eliminate extreme poverty but also to address its multidimensional nature through social protection, access to basic services, and resilience against shocks. Initial progress in the SDG era, however, masked a troubling reality: the pace of global poverty reduction was decelerating significantly. The economic engines that had lifted over a billion people out of poverty in the preceding decades were stalling, and poverty was becoming dangerously concentrated in the world's most fragile regions, particularly Sub-Saharan Africa.

The world entered 2020 on this faltering trajectory, ill-prepared for the seismic shock of the COVID-19 pandemic. The ensuing crisis triggered the most significant setback to global poverty reduction in a generation. In 2020, the number of people living in extreme poverty increased for the first time since 1998, reversing years of hard-won gains and pushing an estimated 70 to 97 million additional people into destitution. This was not a simple regression; the pandemic acted as a powerful "inequality accelerant," disproportionately devastating the livelihoods of women, children, informal workers, and those in low-income countries. It exposed the brittleness of global supply chains and the inadequacy of social safety nets, catching the poor in a vicious scissor effect of collapsing incomes and rising costs for essential goods.

The global response, while unprecedented in scale, was deeply unequal. While advanced economies deployed massive fiscal stimulus, the international support for developing nations—primarily through emergency loans and temporary debt relief—was insufficient to bridge the chasm. The crisis did, however, catalyze a global expansion of social protection systems, potentially marking a paradigm shift in crisis response. Yet, the recovery has been slow, uneven, and incomplete. The world now faces a post-pandemic landscape defined by a "polycrisis" of intersecting health, economic, climate, and conflict-related shocks.

With the recent upward revision of the international poverty line to $3.00 per day, the scale of the challenge is now understood to be even greater. Global poverty reduction has slowed to a near standstill, and projections indicate that the world will fail to achieve the 2030 target by a wide margin, with nearly 600 million people still trapped in extreme poverty. This failure threatens not only the lives and futures of millions but also the credibility of the entire 2030 Agenda. A radical reorientation of policy is now a strategic imperative, focusing on building adaptive social protection systems, fostering inclusive and resilient growth, closing the financing gap for essential services, and tackling the root drivers of fragility.

Section 1: The Global Ambition to Eradicate Poverty

The adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in 2015 marked a pivotal moment in the global fight against poverty. Building on the momentum of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the international community committed to a more ambitious and comprehensive vision. Sustainable Development Goal 1 (SDG 1), "End poverty in all its forms everywhere," serves as the cornerstone of this agenda, reflecting a sophisticated understanding of poverty as a condition extending far beyond mere income deprivation.1

1.1 Deconstructing SDG 1: A Multidimensional Mandate

The architecture of SDG 1 represents a significant evolution from the narrower focus of the MDGs. It codifies a multidimensional understanding of poverty, establishing a framework that addresses not only its symptoms but also its structural causes. This is operationalized through a set of seven distinct targets, each with specific indicators for monitoring progress.3

The framework's primary objective, Target 1.1, is the eradication of extreme poverty for all people everywhere by 2030. This is measured by the proportion of the population living below the international poverty line, a threshold originally set at $1.25 per day, updated to $1.90 and later $2.15, and most recently revised to $3.00 per day at 2021 purchasing power parity (PPP).2 This target provides the headline metric for tracking absolute destitution globally.

However, the framework immediately expands beyond this single metric. Target 1.2 commits to reducing at least by half the proportion of men, women, and children living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions.5 This acknowledges that poverty is a relative and context-specific phenomenon, with national poverty lines reflecting country-specific circumstances, living standards, and costs of living.5

Recognizing that income and consumption are precarious, Target 1.3 focuses on implementing nationally appropriate social protection systems and floors. Its key indicator measures the proportion of the population covered by such systems, including benefits for children, the unemployed, older persons, and persons with disabilities.3 This target institutionalizes social safety nets as a primary policy tool for both preventing and mitigating poverty.

Poverty is also understood as a state of exclusion and lack of opportunity. Target 1.4 addresses this by seeking to ensure that all people, particularly the poor and vulnerable, have equal rights to economic resources, access to basic services, and secure control over land and property.4 This links poverty reduction directly to issues of rights, access, and tenure security, moving the agenda beyond simple transfers.

Furthermore, the framework explicitly connects poverty with vulnerability. Target 1.5 aims to build the resilience of the poor and reduce their exposure to climate-related extreme events and other economic, social, and environmental shocks and disasters.4 This was a prescient inclusion, directly anticipating the kind of systemic shock that the COVID-19 pandemic would later represent.

Finally, Targets 1.a and 1.b address the means of implementation, calling for the significant mobilization of resources through development cooperation and the creation of sound, pro-poor, and gender-sensitive policy frameworks to accelerate investment in poverty eradication.2

This multidimensional structure, while providing a more accurate and holistic representation of deprivation, simultaneously created profound challenges for cohesive policy implementation and measurement. The inherent complexity meant that progress could be uneven across targets; for instance, a nation might see a decline in income poverty (Target 1.1) while its population's vulnerability to shocks (Target 1.5) increases. This framework, in its very design, foreshadowed the complex vulnerabilities that a global crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic would later exploit and magnify.

Table 1: SDG 1 - A Multidimensional Framework

Target

Official Goal Statement

Key Indicator(s)

Significance

1.1

Eradicate extreme poverty for all people everywhere.

1.1.1: Proportion of population below the international poverty line.

The headline metric for absolute destitution.

1.2

Reduce at least by half the proportion of people living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions.

1.2.1: Proportion of population living below the national poverty line.

Acknowledges the relative and context-specific nature of poverty.

1.3

Implement nationally appropriate social protection systems and measures for all.

1.3.1: Proportion of population covered by social protection floors/systems.

Measures the strength of safety nets to prevent and mitigate poverty.

1.4

Ensure all have equal rights to economic resources, basic services, ownership and control over land.

1.4.1: Proportion of population in households with access to basic services.

Links poverty to access and rights, not just income.

1.5

Build the resilience of the poor and reduce their vulnerability to climate-related extreme events and other shocks.

1.5.1: Number of deaths, missing persons, and directly affected persons attributed to disasters.

Connects poverty directly to vulnerability from climate and other shocks.

1.2 The State of Poverty at the Dawn of the SDGs (2015)

When the Sustainable Development Goals were launched in 2015, the world had just concluded a period of historic progress against poverty. The global extreme poverty rate had fallen to 10.1%, equivalent to 740 million people living on less than $1.90 a day.8 This represented a dramatic reduction from the 36% rate recorded in 1990, with over one billion people having escaped extreme poverty during the MDG era.10

This headline success, however, masked deep-seated structural vulnerabilities that would define the challenges of the SDG era. The progress was not evenly distributed. It was overwhelmingly driven by rapid, broad-based economic growth in a few large countries, particularly in East Asia and South Asia.9 While this growth model had proven remarkably effective at lifting large populations just over the poverty line, it left behind a poverty problem that was becoming geographically concentrated and structurally more difficult to solve.

By 2015, the locus of global poverty was decisively shifting. The "easy wins" from East Asia's economic transformation were largely complete. The remaining global poverty was increasingly entrenched in regions characterized by weak state capacity, high levels of conflict and fragility, and profound vulnerability to climate shocks—most notably, Sub-Saharan Africa.9 The drivers of poverty in these contexts—such as poor governance, civil conflict, and environmental degradation—are far less responsive to economic growth alone. This implied that the very strategies that had been so successful from 1990 to 2015 were already becoming less effective for the challenges that remained.

Furthermore, the 2015 baseline revealed profound weaknesses in the social safety nets designed to protect the vulnerable. Globally, only 45% of the population was covered by at least one social protection cash benefit, leaving approximately 4 billion people without any formal safety net.11 The gaps were most severe in the regions where poverty was deepest. In Sub-Saharan Africa, a staggering 87% of the population lacked any social protection coverage.11 Similarly, the share of the world's workers living in extreme poverty, though down from previous decades, remained substantial at 8.4%.11 The world was thus entering the SDG era with a poverty problem that was not only more geographically concentrated but also structurally more resilient to traditional development approaches, leaving hundreds of millions acutely vulnerable to the next major shock.

Section 2: A Faltering Pace: Progress and Headwinds (2015-2019)

The initial years of the SDG era were marked by a critical and ominous trend: the global campaign against poverty was losing momentum. While the absolute number of people in extreme poverty continued to fall, the rate of reduction slowed dramatically. This deceleration, coupled with a stark regional divergence in outcomes, created a landscape of heightened vulnerability. The world was not on track to meet its 2030 target even before the pandemic, and the structural weaknesses in the global anti-poverty effort were becoming increasingly apparent.

2.1 The Deceleration of Poverty Reduction

The period between 2015 and 2019 was one of continued, yet decelerating, progress. The global extreme poverty rate fell from 10.1% in 2015 to 8.6% in 2018, with the number of people living on less than $1.90 a day dropping from 740 million to 656 million.8 However, the pace of this progress was a cause for significant concern.

Analysis reveals that the annual rate of poverty reduction had slowed to less than half of its historical average. Between 1990 and 2014, the global poverty rate decreased by an average of 1.1 percentage points each year. In the period from 2014 to 2019, this pace slowed to just 0.6 percentage points per year, the slowest rate of reduction in three decades.10 This slowdown was not merely a statistical fluctuation; it was a systemic signal that the poverty-reducing power of the global economic model was waning. It suggested that global growth was becoming less inclusive, with its benefits failing to reach the most marginalized populations.

This trend was widely recognized by international bodies. UN reports from the period consistently warned that the world was off-track. Baseline projections, which did not account for the possibility of a global pandemic, suggested that at the prevailing rate of progress, 6% of the world's population—over 400 million people—would still be living in extreme poverty in 2030, a clear failure to meet Target 1.1.11 The "stalling engine" of poverty reduction meant that the world entered the pandemic with no momentum and diminishing resilience. This lack of forward progress made the subsequent reversal caused by COVID-19 far more severe and devastating than it might have been had the world been on a stronger trajectory. The problem was not simply that progress was slow; the underlying mechanisms of progress themselves were weakening, leaving the global system fragile and exposed.

2.2 A Tale of Two Worlds: Regional Divergence

The aggregate global figures concealed a sharp and growing divergence between regions. The story of poverty from 2015 to 2019 was a tale of two worlds: one of continued, albeit slowing, progress in Asia, and another of deepening stagnation and concentration in Africa.

Asia, particularly South Asia, continued to make significant strides. India was on a remarkable trajectory, with estimates suggesting that its population in extreme poverty would fall from 268 million in 2011 to less than 50 million by 2019.12 Driven by such progress, the Asian continent as a whole was projected to achieve an average poverty rate of below 3% by early 2019, with a further fall to just 1% by 2025 anticipated.12

In stark contrast, poverty was becoming more widespread and entrenched in Sub-Saharan Africa. The region's share of the world's extreme poor surged dramatically, from approximately 50% in 2014 to an estimated 70% by 2019.12 This was not just a relative shift; in absolute terms, the situation was worsening in parts of the continent. Projections indicated that 13 African countries were on a path to see an increase in the absolute number of their citizens living in extreme poverty between 2019 and 2030.12 The concentration was set to become even more acute, with forecasts showing that by 2030, nine of the ten countries with the largest populations of extreme poor would be in Africa.12

This profound regional divergence created a "geography of vulnerability." The consolidation of global poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa—a region characterized by high rates of informal employment, the world's lowest social protection coverage, limited government fiscal space, and high exposure to both climate and conflict shocks—amounted to the formation of a massive, geographically-bound zone of extreme fragility.9 The world's poverty problem was ceasing to be global in a distributed sense; it was rapidly becoming a distinctly African crisis. This divergence was not just in outcomes but in resilience. The regions making progress were, broadly speaking, also building more robust systems, while the region where poverty was concentrating was simultaneously the least equipped to handle a major systemic shock. The COVID-19 pandemic did not create this vulnerability; it was the spark that ignited a powder keg that had been accumulating for years.

Section 3: The Great Reversal: COVID-19 and the Unraveling of a Generation's Progress

The COVID-19 pandemic represents the most significant shock to the global fight against poverty in modern history. It precipitated a catastrophic reversal of progress, unraveling decades of gains in a matter of months. The crisis was not merely a temporary setback but a multifaceted cataclysm that deepened existing inequalities and fundamentally altered the nature of global poverty. It exposed the profound vulnerabilities of the world's poorest populations and the economic systems upon which they depend.

3.1 Quantifying the Shock: A Historic Setback

The onset of the pandemic in 2020 triggered an immediate and dramatic increase in global poverty. For the first time since the Asian financial crisis of 1998, and by the largest margin since 1990, the global extreme poverty rate rose sharply, climbing from 8.3% in 2019 to 9.2% in 2020.8

This increase translated into a massive surge in the number of people living in destitution. Estimates vary, but a consensus indicates that the pandemic pushed an additional 70 million to 97 million people into extreme poverty in 2020 alone.8 This single-year shock effectively erased more than four years of steady progress, setting the world back to poverty levels not seen since approximately 2017.8

The impact was not confined to the general population. The share of the world's workers living in extreme poverty—the "working poor"—also increased for the first time in two decades. The rate rose from 6.7% in 2019 to 7.2% in 2020, pushing an additional 8 million employed individuals and their families below the poverty line.8

However, to describe this event as a simple "reversal" understates the depth of the damage. It was not a linear regression along a predictable path. The pandemic fundamentally altered the characteristics of global poverty. Driven by lockdowns, business closures, and the collapse of service industries, the crisis created a new cohort of "new poor," many of whom were urban, previously employed in the informal service sector, and living just above the poverty line.17 Thrust into destitution, this group often lacked the traditional rural safety nets, such as subsistence agriculture, that had cushioned previous shocks. The pandemic thus not only increased the quantity of poverty but also changed its quality, creating new challenges for policy and recovery efforts.

Table 2: Global Extreme Poverty Trends - The COVID-19 Inflection Point

Year

International Poverty Line

Global Poverty Rate (%)

Number of People in Extreme Poverty (Millions)

Key Event / Trend

2015

$1.90 (2011 PPP)

10.1%

740

SDG Launch; Continued progress.

2018

$1.90 (2011 PPP)

8.6%

656

Decelerating pace of reduction becomes evident.

2019

$1.90 (2011 PPP)

8.3%

~641

Eve of the pandemic; progress has stalled.

2020

$1.90 (2011 PPP)

9.2%

~734

COVID-19 Pandemic; First increase in a generation.

2022

$2.15 (2017 PPP)

8.4%

~670

Slow, uneven recovery begins.

2024 (proj.)

$3.00 (2021 PPP)

10.3%

839

Post-pandemic stagnation; new poverty line reveals higher numbers.

2025 (proj.)

$3.00 (2021 PPP)

10.1%

~808

Minimal progress projected.

3.2 The Anatomy of the Crisis: Channels of Economic Disruption

The pandemic-induced rise in poverty was driven by a series of interconnected economic shocks that paralyzed livelihoods and eroded household resilience. These channels of disruption operated simultaneously, creating a perfect storm for the world's poor.

First and foremost was the collapse of labor markets. Public health measures, including lockdowns and restrictions on movement, brought economic activity to a halt, particularly in contact-intensive service sectors such as tourism, hospitality, retail, and transportation.17 The International Labour Organization estimated that the equivalent of 400 million full-time jobs were lost globally in the second quarter of 2020 alone. Global labor income plummeted by 10% in the first nine months of the year, a loss of over $3.5 trillion.17

Second, the crisis triggered a paralysis of global supply chains. The combination of factory shutdowns, port closures, and a sudden rotation in consumer demand from services to durable goods created unprecedented bottlenecks in global production and logistics.20 This led to severe shortages of goods and a sky-rocketing of shipping costs. These disruptions fed directly into producer price inflation, which was eventually passed on to consumers, eroding the purchasing power of households already reeling from income loss.20 This dynamic revealed the hidden fragility of the hyper-efficient "just-in-time" economic systems that had defined globalization. The very structures that had driven down consumer prices for decades proved brittle, becoming a key vector for transmitting the economic shock and disproportionately harming the poor.

Third, the pandemic led to a widespread collapse of small and informal businesses. These enterprises, which constitute the vast majority of employers in the developing world, were hit hardest by the drop in demand and operating restrictions. Lacking access to formal credit, savings, or government support, millions of such businesses were forced to close permanently, wiping out the livelihoods of their owners and employees.18

These mechanisms did not operate in isolation. Rather, they combined to create a devastating "scissor effect" on the poor. One blade was the sharp and sudden loss of income from jobs and businesses. The other blade was the rising cost of essential goods, particularly food, driven by supply chain disruptions and inflation. The world's most vulnerable populations were caught between falling incomes and a rising cost of survival, a combination that rapidly pushed millions below the poverty line.

3.3 The Pandemic's Unequal Burden: An Inequality Accelerant

The impacts of the COVID-19 crisis were felt universally, but they were not distributed equally. The pandemic acted as a powerful diagnostic tool, revealing and magnifying the structural inequalities that lie dormant during periods of stability. Vulnerability to the pandemic's economic fallout was not random; it was systematically patterned along pre-existing fault lines of gender, age, employment status, and geography.

Women were disproportionately affected. They were more likely to lose their jobs due to their overrepresentation in the hardest-hit service sectors and in occupations intensive in face-to-face interactions.18 Simultaneously, with the closure of schools and childcare facilities, women shouldered a massive increase in unpaid care responsibilities, forcing many to reduce their working hours or leave the labor force entirely.18

Children faced what the UN has termed a potential "generational catastrophe".16 The pandemic reversed three years of progress in the fight against child poverty, with an estimated 333 million children living in extremely poor households in 2022.10 School closures led to unprecedented disruptions in education, with an additional 101 million children falling below minimum reading proficiency levels.16 These learning losses threaten to have long-lasting "scarring effects," reducing future earnings, undermining social mobility, and perpetuating cycles of poverty for an entire generation.15

Informal workers, who make up more than half of the global workforce and a vast majority in low-income countries, were acutely vulnerable. Lacking formal contracts, they had no access to social insurance programs like unemployment benefits or job retention schemes.13 Many were unable to work from home and toiled in crowded conditions, exposing them to a dual threat of viral infection and economic ruin. Evidence from Peru, for example, showed that holding an informal job in 2019 made a worker 12.4% more likely to become unemployed in 2020.22

The crisis also exacerbated global inequality between nations. While all countries experienced economic contractions, the capacity to respond and the pace of recovery were wildly divergent. By 2021, 40% of advanced economies had seen their output recover to pre-pandemic levels. The comparable figure for low-income countries was just 21%.18 This growing divide between rich and poor countries threatens to create a "lost decade" for development in the world's most vulnerable regions.15

The long-term consequence of these unequal impacts is not just a temporary spike in poverty but the potential for a deeper and more entrenched structure of global inequality. The pandemic did not just push people down; it damaged the very ladders—education, stable employment, gender equality—that they might have used to climb back up.

Table 3: The Pandemic's Unequal Burden - Disproportionate Impacts on Vulnerable Groups

Vulnerable Group

Pre-Pandemic Vulnerability

Key Pandemic Impacts

Illustrative Data Point

Long-Term Consequence

Women

Overrepresented in low-wage, contact-intensive sectors; higher existing burden of unpaid care work.

Higher rates of job loss; massive increase in unpaid care due to school closures; reduced labor force participation.

Women were more likely to lose jobs because female-dominated sectors are more intensive in face-to-face interactions.22

Entrenched gender inequality; "scarring effect" on lifetime earnings and career progression.

Children

Disproportionately represented among the extreme poor (over 50% of poor are children).

Reversal of progress in child poverty reduction; massive disruption to education, leading to learning loss.

Pandemic led to three lost years of progress in child poverty reduction.10 Additional 101 million children fell below minimum reading proficiency.16

Intergenerational transmission of poverty; reduced human capital for an entire generation.

Informal Workers

Lack of access to social insurance (unemployment, health); precarious income; unsafe working conditions.

Severe income loss with no safety net; inability to work from home; higher exposure to the virus.

Having an informal job in 2019 increased the likelihood of job loss in 2020 by 12.4% (Peru).22

Increased destitution; erosion of livelihoods with no formal support systems to aid recovery.

Low-Income Countries

Limited fiscal space; high debt levels; weak health and social protection systems.

Inability to mount large-scale fiscal responses; divergent and slower economic recovery; increased debt distress.

By 2021, only 21% of low-income countries had recovered to pre-pandemic output levels, vs. 40% of advanced economies.18

Widening global inequality; a "lost decade" for development, making SDG achievement impossible.

Section 4: Global Response and National Resilience

In the face of the unprecedented economic and social crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, governments and international institutions mobilized a response of historic scale. This effort was defined by two parallel tracks: a massive deployment of financial resources and debt relief by international bodies, and a rapid, near-universal expansion of national social protection systems. While these actions were critical in staving off an even deeper catastrophe, they also exposed the profound inequalities in the global capacity to respond to shocks.

4.1 An Unprecedented Mobilization: The International Response

The international financial institutions acted with remarkable speed to cushion the economic blow of the pandemic. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) responded with what it termed "unprecedented speed and magnitude," providing emergency financing to 85 countries to help them manage the crisis.24 A key measure was the temporary doubling of access limits to its emergency facilities—the Rapid Credit Facility (RCF) and the Rapid Financing Instrument (RFI). These instruments are designed for rapid disbursement and lack the stringent conditionality of full-fledged IMF programs, making them ideal for acute crises.24

Alongside direct financing, debt relief became a central pillar of the international response. The IMF provided grants for debt service relief to 29 of its poorest and most vulnerable member countries through its Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust (CCRT).24 This was complemented by a broader initiative from the G20, the Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI), which suspended official bilateral debt service payments from 73 low- and lower-middle-income countries.24 These measures were intended to free up scarce fiscal resources in developing countries, allowing them to be redirected toward urgent health and social spending. The World Bank also played a critical role, deploying significant financial and technical support to help countries strengthen their health systems and scale up social safety nets.25

While the scale of this mobilization was historic, it was ultimately insufficient to counteract the vast fiscal chasm that separated rich and poor countries. The emergency support provided crucial liquidity and prevented immediate defaults, but it came largely in the form of loans, not grants. This had the perverse effect of increasing the long-term debt burden for many developing nations, creating new risks that now threaten an equitable recovery.18 The international response, though essential, was a fraction of the multi-trillion-dollar fiscal stimulus packages that advanced economies were able to deploy domestically. This fundamental inequality in response capacity became a primary driver of the divergent recovery paths that have defined the post-pandemic world, treating the immediate fire but doing little to address the underlying fiscal fragility that left poor countries so exposed.

4.2 The Rise of the Social Safety Net: National Policy Innovations

At the national level, the crisis catalyzed a dramatic and widespread expansion of social protection. Faced with the necessity of imposing lockdowns that severed millions from their livelihoods, governments across the globe turned to social safety nets as their primary tool for economic relief. In a remarkable show of policy convergence, almost every country in the world introduced new or adapted existing social protection measures in response to the pandemic.8

These policies took various forms, including the expansion of existing social assistance programs, the creation of new emergency cash transfer schemes, and the implementation of job retention programs that subsidized the wages of formal sector employees to prevent mass layoffs.25 The result was a massive and rapid scaling-up of social protection coverage. By 2023, for the first time on record, over half (52.4%) of the world's population was receiving at least one social protection benefit, a significant increase from 42.8% in 2015.6

This global experiment may prove to be a watershed moment for social protection policy. It challenged long-held orthodoxies about fiscal austerity during crises and demonstrated the feasibility of rapidly delivering cash to large segments of the population. However, the crisis also laid bare the deep digital and administrative divides that limited the effectiveness of these programs, particularly in low-income countries. Reaching the most vulnerable—especially informal workers, who are often invisible to state administrative systems—proved to be a monumental challenge.13 The legacy of the pandemic is therefore a dual one: it has led to a greater global acceptance of the indispensable role of social protection in crisis response, but it has also provided a stark lesson in the immense state capacity required to deliver it effectively and equitably. The crisis simultaneously proved the value of the social safety net and highlighted the profound barriers to its universal implementation, setting a new and urgent agenda for strengthening delivery systems in the post-pandemic era.

Section 5: The Post-Pandemic Landscape: A New Reality and a Bleak Outlook

The world has emerged from the acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic into a new and more challenging development landscape. The recovery has been slow, divergent, and incomplete, leaving global poverty rates stubbornly high. A significant methodological update to the international poverty line has further revealed the true scale of global deprivation. The goal of ending poverty by 2030, once a challenging ambition, now appears to be an unreachable target. The world is grappling not just with the pandemic's aftershocks but with a "polycrisis" where intersecting crises of conflict, climate change, and economic instability are compounding to make the fight against poverty more difficult than ever.

5.1 The Current State of Global Poverty (2024-2025): An Uneven and Incomplete Recovery

The most recent data paints a grim picture of the state of global poverty. The recovery from the pandemic shock has been K-shaped, with advanced economies and wealthier populations bouncing back while the world's poorest countries and people have been left behind, mired in a debilitating environment of slow growth, high debt, and persistent inflation.18

This reality has been brought into sharper focus by a major methodological update from the World Bank in 2025. The international poverty line was revised upwards from $2.15 (at 2017 PPP) to $3.00 (at 2021 PPP) to reflect new price data and national poverty lines from over 160 countries.2 This is not merely a technical adjustment; it is a re-calibration of our understanding of absolute destitution. The change, combined with new survey data, resulted in a significant upward revision of global poverty figures.

Under this new, more accurate measure, an estimated 808 million people—or 9.9% of the world's population—were living in extreme poverty in 2025.2 The progress in poverty reduction has slowed to what the World Bank describes as a "near standstill".28 Projections for the immediate future show minimal improvement, with the global poverty rate expected to fall only marginally from 10.3% in 2024 to 10.1% in 2025.29

The geographic concentration of poverty has intensified. In 2024, Sub-Saharan Africa's extreme poverty rate stood at a staggering 46%.29 The region is now home to 67% of the world's extreme poor, a share that continues to grow.28 The post-pandemic reality is therefore a dual challenge: the pace of poverty reduction has collapsed, and the scale of the problem is now understood to be significantly larger than previously measured.

5.2 The 2030 Target: An Unreachable Goal?

The combined effect of the pre-pandemic slowdown, the catastrophic reversal caused by COVID-19, and the subsequent sluggish recovery has rendered the primary target of SDG 1 effectively unattainable. There is a firm consensus among international organizations that the goal of eradicating extreme poverty by 2030 will be missed by a wide margin.6

If current trends persist, projections indicate that between 575 million and 622 million people will still be living in extreme poverty in 2030.6 This would represent a global poverty rate of between 7% and 9%, far from the target of below 3% that is considered the statistical definition of eradication. The failure is not confined to the global target. At the national level, progress is equally bleak. It is projected that only one in five countries is on track to achieve SDG Target 1.2—halving their national poverty rates by 2030.2

This projected failure represents more than a missed deadline. SDG 1 is the pivotal goal of the 2030 Agenda, the foundation upon which the other 16 goals are built.1 A clear and undeniable failure on this headline commitment risks undermining the credibility of the entire sustainable development framework. It could lead to donor fatigue, political disillusionment, and a retreat from the multilateral cooperation that is essential for addressing complex global challenges. The legacy of the pandemic may therefore not only be higher poverty in 2030, but also a weakened global commitment to addressing it in the decades that follow.

5.3 Intersecting Crises: Poverty in an Age of Polycrisis

The challenge of poverty reduction has fundamentally transformed. It can no longer be viewed as a linear development problem to be solved in isolation. The lingering impacts of the pandemic are now being compounded and amplified by a series of escalating global crises, creating what is increasingly referred to as a "polycrisis".9

Extreme poverty is becoming ever more concentrated in countries characterized by fragility and conflict.9 These environments destroy livelihoods, displace populations, and shatter the state institutions necessary for development and social protection. Simultaneously, the climate crisis is creating a vicious cycle of impoverishment. Nearly 80% of the world's poor—some 887 million people—live in regions that are highly exposed to climate hazards such as extreme heat, flooding, and drought.2 These events destroy assets, disrupt agriculture, and can push vulnerable households into a permanent state of poverty.

The pandemic was the first great shock of this new era, and it provided a stark lesson: siloed policy approaches are doomed to fail. The pre-pandemic models of poverty reduction, which relied heavily on the assumption of stable global growth, are now woefully inadequate. Investing in agriculture to reduce rural poverty is futile if those investments are repeatedly wiped out by climate-related disasters. Building a factory to create jobs is pointless if the region descends into conflict. Poverty is now an emergent property of an unstable and interconnected global system. This reality demands a paradigm shift in our approach, moving away from narrowly targeted poverty programs toward integrated strategies that build systemic resilience across economic, social, and environmental domains. The path out of poverty is now inextricably linked to the path towards peace and planetary stability.

Section 6: Strategic Imperatives for a Renewed Push Against Poverty

The analysis of the past decade reveals that a "business-as-usual" approach to poverty reduction is a recipe for continued failure. The compounding effects of the pandemic, escalating conflicts, and the climate crisis demand a radical reorientation of policy and investment. To regain momentum and address the new realities of global poverty, a set of strategic imperatives must guide national and international efforts.

6.1 Mainstreaming Adaptive Social Protection

The pandemic forced a global-scale experiment in the use of social safety nets as a primary crisis response tool. The key lesson is that these systems must be made permanent, adaptive, and universal. Governments and their international partners must invest in building robust social protection systems that can function as economic stabilizers. This requires moving beyond ad-hoc emergency responses to create permanent systems with features like scalable payment mechanisms and dynamic registries that can be rapidly expanded in response to shocks. Leveraging digital technology is crucial for improving targeting and reaching marginalized populations, particularly those in the informal economy, who were largely missed by initial pandemic relief efforts.

6.2 Investing in Inclusive and Resilient Growth

The pre-pandemic slowdown demonstrated that headline GDP growth alone is insufficient to end poverty. The focus must shift to the quality and inclusivity of growth. This means prioritizing investments in sectors that create decent jobs, especially for women and youth. The care economy and green infrastructure are two such sectors with high potential for job-rich, sustainable growth. Furthermore, economic strategies must be designed with resilience in mind. This involves diversifying economies to reduce dependence on volatile commodity markets, strengthening local and regional supply chains to mitigate the risks of global disruptions, and ensuring that all infrastructure investments are climate-resilient.

6.3 Closing the Financing Gap

The divergent recovery from the pandemic was driven by a massive gap in fiscal capacity between rich and poor nations. Closing this gap is a prerequisite for any meaningful progress. A multi-pronged approach is required. First, developing countries must enhance domestic resource mobilization through fairer and more efficient tax systems. Second, the international community must meet and exceed its official development assistance (ODA) commitments. Third, the global financial architecture must be reformed to provide comprehensive debt restructuring that goes beyond temporary relief and offers a sustainable path out of debt distress for low-income countries. This is essential to free up the fiscal space needed for critical investments in health, education, and social protection, which require an estimated additional $1.4 trillion annually in low- and middle-income countries.2

6.4 Tackling the Drivers of Fragility

The analysis shows unequivocally that the world's most entrenched poverty exists at the nexus of conflict, climate change, and weak governance. Poverty reduction efforts can no longer be separated from peacebuilding and climate action. Development investments must be conflict-sensitive and designed to strengthen social cohesion. Climate finance must be scaled up and directed toward adaptation measures that protect the lives and livelihoods of the poor. This integrated approach recognizes that resilience is multidimensional. A household, community, or nation cannot escape poverty if it is constantly being battered by the shocks of conflict and climate change. Addressing these root drivers of fragility is no longer a separate agenda; it is central to the fight against poverty itself.

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