Beyond the Headcount: The Changing Geography and Composition of Global Poverty, 2003–2024

Minh Cong Nguyen, Nishant Yonzan, Ben James Brunckhorst, Sotaire Kwizera, Christoph Lakner, Gabriel Lara Ibarra and Henry Stemmler

No 11489, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: Using harmonized household surveys from 154 countries, covering about 96 percent of the global population, this paper examines changes in geography and composition of poverty. It yields two main findings. First, global extreme poverty decreased substantially between 2003 and 2024 (by roughly 1.2 billion people), however progress slowed and became increasingly uneven between 2013 and 2024. By 2024, the poor were concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa, fragile economies, rural communities, younger populations, groups with limited education, and connected with high-poverty subnational regions. Poverty overlaps strongly with drought exposure, although associations with floods, cyclones, and heatwaves are more mixed. Second, advances in urbanization and education—both strongly associated with poverty reduction in East and South Asia—have produced much smaller gains in Sub-Saharan Africa. East and South Asia had at least one decade where a 1-percentage-point increase in urbanization or greater than primary educational attainment was associated with a 10-percentage-point or greater decline in extreme poverty. Sub-Saharan Africa experienced similar changes in urbanization and education, but much more muted poverty reduction.

Date: 2026-10-21
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