While poverty is declining globally, number of poor people rise in Sub-Saharan Africa: Data

World Bank data shows poverty decline globally, but Sub-Saharan Africa sees increase, highlighting importance of stability for economic growth.

At a time when the number of people living in poverty has been declining worldwide, and significantly in some regions, Sub-Saharan Africa has seen a high increase. In 1990, 278 million people were identified as poor in Sub-Saharan Africa. This number increased to 397 million in 2019. The increase was particularly profound in the last decades, from 2008 onwards, when conflicts occurred in many countries in this region. These statistics were compiled by the World Bank.

This is in contrast to other regions. In South Asia, for instance, 1.62 billion people were identified as poor in 1990. This number came down to 221 million in 2019. In fact, in 1990, 80% of the world’s poor were living in South Asia, while only 13.8% were in Sub-Saharan Africa. In 2019, though, the share in South Asia fell to 31.4% while that of Sub-Saharan Africa increased to 56.6%. The overall estimated numbers of poor people, the world over, fell from 2.01 billion in 1990 to 702 million.

Chart 1 | The chart shows the number of people living below the poverty line of $2.15/day (2017 PPP).

Charts appear incomplete? Click to remove AMP mode

While the number of poor people in Sub-Saharan Africa increased, poverty in terms of the share of the region’s population reduced from 53.8% in 1990 to 35.4% in 2019 (Chart 2). The corresponding number for South Asia fell from 49.8% to 10.5%, a drastic decline that is offset slightly by the fact that the share increased marginally from 10.4% in 2018 to 10.5% in 2019.

Chart 2 | The chart shows poverty in terms of percentage of population.

In West Asia and North Africa, poverty levels which were steadily declining from 1990 took a turn for the worse in 2014 and steadily increased from then to reach 9.6% in 2018, higher than 6.3% in 1990. This increase coincided with the civil wars in Syria, Libya, and Iraq, and the conflicts in Yemen. Besides, states have been fragile in this region in the aftermath of the Arab Spring.