Counting the World's Poor

To track global poverty, the World Bank sets an international poverty line, based on the national poverty lines of some of the world's poorest countries and converted using purchasing power parity. It began as roughly a dollar a day in 1990 and has been revised several times as prices and data changed, including to $3. 00 a day in 2025. By this kind of measure, the share of humanity in extreme poverty fell from more than a third in 1990 to under a tenth by the late 2010s, driven above all by growth in China, India and the rest of Asia.

Progress has been slower in sub-Saharan Africa, where a rising share of the world's extreme poor now live. Critics argue that a single line is too low to represent a dignified life, so the Bank also reports higher lines and multidimensional measures that include schooling, sanitation and electricity. Poverty numbers therefore depend on definitions, data surveys and judgment.