SDG Goals

The Alimata family live in the Centre region of Burkina Faso. The parents work 103 hours a week to pay for food. Their one-room home has no electricity or toilet, and they spend iii.v hours a week collecting water. They use charcoal and woods as fuel for their stove.

© Zoriah Miller

The effects of the coronavirus illness 2022 (COVID-19) pandemic have reversed much of the progress fabricated in reducing poverty, with global extreme poverty rising in 2022 for the first fourth dimension since the Asian fiscal crisis of the late 1990s. Fifty-fifty before COVID-19, the earth was non on rail to achieve the goal of catastrophe poverty by 2030, and without immediate and pregnant activity, information technology will remain beyond reach. The crisis has demonstrated more clearly than ever the importance of disaster preparedness and robust social protection systems. While the number of countries with disaster risk reduction strategies has increased substantially, and many temporary social protection measures have been put in place in response to the pandemic, increased efforts are needed on both fronts to ensure the most vulnerable are protected.

COVID-nineteen has led to the first rise in extreme poverty in a generation

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the share of the world's population living in farthermost poverty fell from 10.1 per cent in 2022 to 9.3 per cent in 2022. This means that the number of people living on less than $ane.90 per day dropped from 741 million to 689 million. However, the rate of reduction had slowed to less than half a percentage point annually betwixt 2022 and 2022, compared with one per centum point annually between 1990 and 2022.

The pandemic has compounded the threats to progress raised by conflict and climate change. Estimates suggest that 2022 saw an increase of between 119 million and 124 million global poor, of whom threescore per cent are in Southern Asia. Nowcasts point to the first ascension in the extreme poverty charge per unit since 1998, from 8.iv per cent in 2022 to 9.v per cent in 2022, undoing the progress made since 2022. The impacts of the pandemic will not exist brusk-lived. Based on current projections, the global poverty rate is expected to be 7 per cent (around 600 million people) in 2030, missing the target of eradicating poverty.

Number of people living below $ane.xc a 24-hour interval, 2022¬–2017, 2022–2020 nowcast, and forecast before and after COVID-19 (millions)



Working poverty disproportionately affects women and youth, and the pandemic is likely to magnify those disparities

The share of the world'due south workers living in extreme poverty fell by more than half from 2010 to 2022 – from 14 per cent to six.six per cent. However, lockdowns and related public health measures due to COVID-nineteen have severely affected the breezy economy, where the vast majority of the working poor are employed. The related income losses threaten to roll back global progress on reducing working poverty.

Although the gender gap in working poverty globally has narrowed over the years, a substantial gap persists in many parts of the globe, especially in the least developed countries (LDCs). There, one tertiary (33.5 per cent) of employed women were living in poverty in 2022, compared with 28.3 per cent of employed men. Worldwide, young workers are twice as probable to be living in poverty as adults, reflecting lower earnings and poorer quality jobs. Since the COVID-19 crisis has had a disproportionate bear upon on the livelihoods of women and young people, information technology is likely to exacerbate these longstanding disparities.

Proportion of employed population living below $ane.90 a day, 2022 (percentage)


Governments have put new social protection measures in identify, just virtually are only temporary

Social protection measures are fundamental to preventing and reducing poverty across the life cycle. Nevertheless, past 2022, only 46.ix per cent of the global population were finer covered by at least one social protection cash benefit, leaving every bit many equally 4 billion people without a social safety internet. The COVID-19 crisis has demonstrated the importance of social protection systems to protect people's wellness, jobs and incomes, likewise as the consequences of high coverage gaps. Every bit a consequence, many new social protection measures were introduced in 2022: betwixt one February and 31 Dec, the Governments of 209 countries and territories announced more than ane,600 such measures in response to the crunch, but almost all (94.7 per cent) were short term in nature.

Before the pandemic, nigh of the population (85.4 per cent) in high-income countries was effectively covered by at least 1 social protection benefit, compared with simply over one tenth (thirteen.4 per cent) in low-income countries. The coverage gap is fifty-fifty greater for those considered vulnerable, only 7.8 per cent of whom were covered by social assistance in depression-income countries.

Proportion of total population finer covered by at least i social protection benefit and vulnerable persons covered past social aid, past income-level of country, 2022 or latest available year (pct)



Good results from a global initiative to reduce disaster risk could be undermined past the pandemic

Disasters and their immediate impacts threaten to contrary development gains and slow poverty reduction and hunger alleviation. Based on the latest reporting under the Sendai Framework monitoring process, direct economic losses of $70.four billion due to disasters were reported by 53 countries for 2022, of which 60 per cent ($42.5 billion) were recorded in the agricultural sector.

In 2022, over 24,000 deaths were attributed to disasters in 67 countries. This is a substantial reduction from 2022, when disaster mortality peaked at 126,000 (reported past 79 countries), and is consistent with an overall trend of declining bloodshed since 2005. Withal, COVID-xix is already reversing this progress, overwhelming health systems and highlighting underlying socioeconomic vulnerabilities to biological hazards.

The adoption and implementation of robust multi-risk disaster risk reduction strategies, which incorporate biological risks such as COVID-xix, are disquisitional. As of April 2022, 120 countries reported that they had developed and adopted national and/or local disaster chance reduction strategies, up from 48 during the Sendai Framework'south nascent catamenia in 2022.

Number of countries with national and/or local disaster risk reduction strategies, 2022–2020