The global fight against extreme poverty is losing momentum, with an estimated 826 million people still struggling to survive on the world’s lowest incomes, the World Bank has warned.
The figure comes despite major gains over the past three decades, with the share of people living in extreme poverty falling from 43 per cent in 1990 to about 10 per cent today.
The World Bank says the progress remains one of the biggest improvements in living standards in modern history, but warns that reducing poverty among the poorest populations is becoming increasingly difficult.
Dozens of countries still have extreme poverty rates above 40 per cent, highlighting the scale of the challenge facing governments and development agencies.
The World Bank currently defines extreme poverty as living on less than $3 per person per day, based on 2021 prices.
The threshold was raised in 2025 from $2.15 to $3 after the institution updated its purchasing-power-parity data and reviewed national poverty lines from more than 160 countries.
The change, the bank says, does not represent a new definition of extreme poverty. Rather, it reflects updated estimates of what people in the poorest countries need to afford basic necessities.
Using the 2026 prices, the bank estimates that a typical six-member household living at the extreme poverty line would have a monthly consumption budget of about Sh87,075.
In terms of income, such a household would typically receive about $810 a month, equivalent to Sh104,490, or around Sh1.26 million annually.
The World Bank says keeping the $3 measure is important because the most severe forms of deprivation remain a major global problem.
“Yet today, an estimated 826 million people still live in extreme poverty—a population larger than the European Union and the United States combined. There are still dozens of countries with extreme poverty rates upwards of 40%.”
The bank is also concerned that some of the poorest countries are no longer making progress at the pace recorded in previous years. It warns that if the slowdown continues, the number of people living in extreme poverty could rise over the next decade.
Recent revisions to global poverty figures show how difficult it can be to track progress. In 2022, the bank estimated that 838 million people were living below the revised $3 line.
Its March 2026 update estimated that the global extreme poverty rate stood at 10.4 per cent in 2024, representing about 846.8 million people, before further revisions to the data.
The institution says the extreme poverty measure also helps governments and development agencies direct limited resources towards people facing the greatest hardship.
It says the poorest 10 per cent of the world's population have experienced almost no income growth over the past decade, averaging about 0.1 per cent annually. This compares with about 2 per cent annual growth for people around the middle of the global income distribution.
“While all forms of deprivation are worthy of attention, we live in a reality where low-income countries receive 1/100th of the attention of high-income countries and 1/10th that of upper-middle income countries in media coverage.”
The World Bank says the situation has been made harder by a drop of about 30 per cent in official development assistance over the past two years, putting more pressure on governments and development agencies to decide where scarce resources should be directed.
The institution says the $3 threshold is based on how the poorest countries themselves set their poverty lines, which generally take into account the cost of basic needs such as food, clothing and shelter.
However, the bank cautions that the measure is not intended to replace higher poverty thresholds or broader assessments of living conditions.
It says poverty also involves areas such as access to education and healthcare, meaning that moving above the extreme poverty line does not necessarily mean a person has achieved an adequate standard of living.
“Yet the arguments do mean that if raising the living standards of the worst off globally commands our attention, so does an extreme poverty line.”
The World Bank says retaining the measure is therefore important to ensure that people facing the deepest deprivation remain at the centre of global efforts to reduce poverty.