Eliminating poverty, which affects nearly half of the world’s inhabitants, could take more than a hundred years, the World Bank estimated in a report published Tuesday.
According to the document, entitled Report on Poverty, Prosperity and the Planet, the pace at which efforts to eliminate poverty are advancing, combined with population growth, will not make it possible to achieve this objective, within the set deadlines, for the 44% of the planet’s inhabitants who suffer from it today.
This delay is due to a host of challenges, including “slow economic growth, the Covid-19 pandemic, high debt levels, conflicts and fragility, and climate shocks”, explained Axel van Trotsenburg, senior managing director of the World Bank, cited in the report which estimates poverty at a threshold of $6.85 per day per person.
To get out of this situation, it is necessary to develop a “fundamentally new development manual”, he said.
According to the report, eliminating poverty requires approaches adapted to each country according to its income level, “giving priority to certain policies and managing synergies and trade-offs between objectives”.
Read also: World: More than 300 million children live in extreme poverty
Thus, low-income countries should prioritize economic growth through increased investments in job creation, while middle-income countries are urged to foster income growth that decreases vulnerability to shocks , as well as policies aimed at reducing the carbon intensity of growth.
As for extreme poverty, the WB emphasizes that its elimination, initially planned for 2030, is “out of reach”, adding that it will take at least “three decades”.
Estimated at a threshold of $2.15 per day per person, extreme poverty affects nearly 700 million people, or 8.5% of the world’s population, living mainly in low-income countries located mostly in Africa. sub-Saharan.
Furthermore, the report notes a “stagnation” in the process of reducing inequalities in the world since the Covid crisis, highlighting the slowdown in the growth of inclusive income.
According to the World Bank, global incomes would need to increase fivefold to reach $25 per person per day, the minimum level of prosperity.
Now, almost 1.7 billion people (20% of the world’s population) live in high inequality economies, marked by a lack of opportunities for economic mobility, which hinders the possibilities for inclusive growth and of poverty reduction.
The report also focuses on the impact of “climate shocks” on nearly a fifth of the planet’s inhabitants, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. These shocks will generally be accompanied by “loss of well-being due to the great vulnerability” of the populations concerned.
With MAP
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