The world will not be able to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030, the target date set by the United Nations General Assembly as part of its Sustainable Development Goals adopted in 2015, the World Bank estimated on Wednesday. (BM) in a report.
The institution explains the delay as one of the many consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, which marked the worst rise in poverty since 1990, a trend that the war in Ukraine could reinforce, according to its annual report on poverty.
About 70 million people fell into extreme poverty in 2020, according to the WB, which estimated that nearly 720 million people were living on less than $2.15 a day at the end of 2020. And for good reason: during the pandemic, the poorest 40% saw their income, often from the informal economy in many countries, drop on average twice as much as the richest 20%, resulting in a de facto increase inequality, a first in recent decades.
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“
Our concerns stem from the rise in extreme poverty and the decline in the sharing of wealth caused by inflation, currency depreciations and overlapping crises
,” WB Chairman David Malpass said in the statement. .
Sub-Saharan Africa concentrates 60% of the poorest, ie nearly 390 million people.
The poverty rate is 35%.
In order to eliminate extreme poverty there by 2030, the WB estimates that growth of 9% per year would be necessary in each country of this region by the end of the decade, "
a bar particularly high for countries whose growth in GDP per capita was on average 1.2% during the decade preceding the pandemic
”, estimates the WB.
“
In the next decade, investing in better health care and education will be crucial for developing economies (...).
In a context of record debt and limited fiscal resources, this will not be easy
,” said WB Chief Economist Indermit Gill.
In order to reverse the trend, the institution calls on all governments to better target aid in order to reserve it for the poorest, encourage investment in education and research and development as well as consider taxation that takes better account of income.
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