World Bank says it is ‘impossible’ to eliminate poverty by 2030

The World Bank (WB) believes that eradicating poverty , which affects almost half of the world’s population, by 2030 is “unattainable” , according to a report published on Tuesday.

According to its new study ‘Poverty, Prosperity and Planet’, the first assessment since the pandemic of global progress towards eradicating poverty, the first Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of the UN’s 2030 Agenda will not be achieved at the pace at which progress has been made.

“In recent decades, there has been a huge improvement and more than 1 billion people have been lifted out of poverty, but we have seen a slowdown in that trend. The pandemic hit low-income countries very hard, in particular, and it is precisely those countries that have not managed to recover,” said Luis Felipe López-Calva, the World Bank’s director of Poverty and Equity, at a press conference.

It takes more than 30 years to eradicate poverty

Today, 44% of the world’s population lives on less than $6.85 a day, the poverty line for upper-middle-income countries, the study says. That figure has barely changed since 1990 due to population growth.

Within that percentage, there is 8.5% of the world’s population, almost 700 million people, who live in extreme poverty, which is understood as living on less than $2.15 a day , and the study indicates that by 2030, 7.3% are expected to remain in the same condition.

The document points out that it would take more than three decades to end poverty, especially in low-income countries.

The pandemic caused stagnation

The pandemic is also responsible for the “stagnation” of progress in the Global Prosperity Gap, the World Bank’s new measure of shared prosperity.

“World incomes would have to increase fivefold today to reach the minimum level of prosperity for high-income countries, $25 per person per day,” the study suggests.

The report also states that almost a fifth of the world will experience a severe climate event during their lifetime from which they will have difficulty recovering. Therefore, the report links the need to reduce poverty with the reduction of carbon emissions.

” Low-income countries should prioritise poverty reduction through economic growth via increased investment in job creation, services and infrastructure, while in high- and upper-middle-income countries, where carbon emissions are high, the focus should be on reducing emissions while finding ways to alleviate job losses,” he concludes. EFE