World Bank Poverty Report 2026: About 811 Million People Live on Under $3 a Day, With Jobs Central to Cutting Poverty
The World Bank released its flagship biennial Poverty, Prosperity, and Planet Report 2026 in Washington on October 26, under the theme 'Jobs at the Center of Poverty Eradication'. Drawing on new data from more than 130 economies, the report estimates that about 811 million people, one in ten worldwide, live on less than $3.00 a day in 2026, a rate essentially unchanged since the pandemic.
Without stronger growth in income per person, the number of people in extreme poverty is projected to be higher in 2030 than it is today, the report says. Reaching a 3% extreme poverty rate by 2050 would require per-capita growth of about 4% a year, twice the pace of the past 25 years. More than half of the world's extreme poor live in just nine economies, and by 2030 an estimated 87% will be in Sub-Saharan Africa or in fragile and conflict-affected settings. A further 3.7 billion people, nearly half the world, live on less than $8.30 a day, a figure that has stagnated since 1990. The $3.00 line reflects the standard for low-income countries and $8.30 the standard for upper-middle-income countries.
The report calculates that raising poor households' employment rate to 75%, attainable by closing the gender employment gap, would cut extreme poverty by roughly one-fifth. Raising poor workers' education to the average of those above the line is predicted to lift their earnings by about 40% and nearly halve extreme poverty, while moving workers into wage jobs or out of agriculture could deliver a similar one-fifth reduction.
Pablo Saavedra, the World Bank's Vice President for Prosperity, and Chief Economist Michael Kremer said creating more and better jobs is key to putting poverty reduction back on track.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 位于华盛顿的世界银行集团总部大楼。Victorgrigas 摄，CC BY-SA 3.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / The World Bank Group headquarters in Washington. Photo by Victorgrigas, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
