World Bank Tokyo Online morning Seminar #158 “Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2022: Correcting Course”

The world is unlikely to meet the goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030 absent history-defying rates of economic growth over the remainder of this decade, according to a new World Bank study “Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2022: Correcting Course”. The study finds that COVID-19 dealt the biggest setback to global poverty-reduction efforts since 1990 and the war in Ukraine threatens to make matters worse.

The report provides the first comprehensive look at the global landscape of poverty in the aftermath of the extraordinary series of shocks to the global economy over the past few years. It estimates that the pandemic pushed about 70 million people into extreme poverty in 2020, the largest one-year increase since global poverty monitoring began in 1990. As a result, an estimated 719 million people subsisted on less than $2.15 a day by the end of 2020.

At this seminar, Jed Friedman, Lead Economist, Development Economics, and Yeon Soo Kim, Senior Economist, Poverty and Equity Global Practice, World Bank, shared the main points of the report.