Global poverty index hits 1.2 billion in first inc...

Summary

• The global poverty index tracked by the UN has gone up for the first time in its 16-year history, leaving 1.2 billion people in acute poverty.
• How the global poverty index worksRather than measuring income, the global poverty index captures the everyday shortfalls that poor families face.
• After major gains in the 2010s, both its poverty rate and its number of poor people climbed again in the 2020s.

AI Generated Summary

The global poverty index tracked by the UN has gone up for the first time in its 16-year history, leaving 1.2 billion people in acute poverty.

The United Nations Development Programme released the 2026 edition together with the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, a research centre at Oxford. Compared like for like, it counted 51.5 million more poor people than last year.

Alexander De Croo, who heads the UN development agency, urged governments to treat the figures as an alarm. “The rise in poverty should be a wake-up call for the world,” he said.

In his words, those counted face hardships that feed on one another, from hunger and missed schooling to a lack of clean water or electricity. “This is unacceptable,” De Croo added.

Children bear the heaviest burden

Children make up 617 million of those counted, which is more than half. In fact, almost one in every three children in the countries covered lives in such poverty, the report found.

Under the global poverty index, deprivation also remains largely rural. About 83% of poor people live in the countryside, compared with a much smaller share in towns and cities.