Total of population living in extreme poverty by world region
What you should know about this indicator
- Extreme poverty here is defined as living below the International Poverty Line of $2.15 per day.
- The data is measured in international-$ at 2017 prices – this adjusts for inflation and for differences in the cost of living between countries.
- Depending on the country and year, the data relates to income measured after taxes and benefits, or to consumption, per capita. 'Per capita' means that the income of each household is attributed equally to each member of the household (including children).
- Non-market sources of income, including food grown by subsistence farmers for their own consumption, are taken into account.
- Regional and global estimates are extrapolated up until the year of the data release using GDP growth estimates and forecasts. For more details about the methodology, please refer to the World Bank PIP documentation.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the International Poverty Line and how is it set?
There is no single definition of poverty. Our understanding of the extent of poverty and how it is changing depends on which definition we have in mind.
What are international-$ and why are they used to measure incomes?
Much of the economic data we use to understand the world – for instance on the goods and services bought or produced by households, firms and governments, or the incomes they receive – is initially recorded in terms of the units in which these transactions took place. That means this data starts out being expressed in a variety of local currencies – as so many rupees, US dollars, or yuan, etc. – and without adjusting for inflation over time. This is known as being in ‘current prices’, or in ‘nominal’ terms.
How comparable is the World Bank data on household incomes across time or between countries?
Because there is no global survey of incomes, researchers need to rely on available national surveys. Such surveys are designed with cross-country comparability in mind, but because the surveys reflect the circumstances and priorities of individual countries at the time of the survey, there are some important differences. In collating this survey data the World Bank takes steps to harmonize it where possible, but comparability issues remain.
How does the World Bank produce global and regional estimates of poverty and inequality from national data?
Sources and processing
This data is based on the following sources
How we process data at Our World in Data
All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.
At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.
Notes on our processing step for this indicator
PIP provides regional aggregate figures for the number of people living below the International Poverty Line. Unfortunately, for certain regions and years the data survey coverage is too low and the results are suppressed. From 1990 onwards, it is only for South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa (on different years) that regional estimates are sometimes missing.
For these years we calculate the number of poor in the region as the difference between the estimated total number of poor across the world and the sum of the number of poor across all other regions.
Prior to 1990 estimates for more than one region are missing, precluding this method.
Reuse this work
- All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
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Citations
How to cite this page
To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:
“Data Page: Total of population living in extreme poverty by world region”, part of the following publication: Joe Hasell, Max Roser, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Pablo Arriagada (2022) - “Poverty”. Data adapted from World Bank Poverty and Inequality Platform. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/total-population-living-in-extreme-poverty-by-world-region [online resource]
How to cite this data
In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:
World Bank Poverty and Inequality Platform (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Full citation
World Bank Poverty and Inequality Platform (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Total of population living in extreme poverty by world region – World Bank” [dataset]. World Bank Poverty and Inequality Platform, “World Bank Poverty and Inequality Platform (PIP) 20240627_2017, 20240627_2011” [original data]. Retrieved December 3, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/total-population-living-in-extreme-poverty-by-world-region