Approximately 700 million people, or about 8.5% to 9% of the world's population, live in extreme poverty on less than the updated $2.15 a day. This figure represents individuals lacking basic necessities like food, shelter, and healthcare, with a significant concentration in sub-Saharan Africa.
There are around 1 billion people in the world who live with less than 1 dollar per day. More than half of the world population lives with less than 10 dollars a day.
The latest global estimates for 2025 show that around 800 million people are in extreme poverty. This means that roughly one in ten people are living on less than $3 a day.
According to the June 2025 update, 817 million people lived in extreme poverty in 2024 under the new $3 a day line. This is 125 million more than the previous estimate based on the old $2.15 definition. This chart compares the September 2024 data with the latest World Bank data.
In this analysis, we require that a child report at least three months during a calendar year with a household income below the threshold of less than $2 per person per day (approximated as $60 per person per month) to be counted as experiencing a spell of $2-a-day poverty.
South Sudan ranks as the poorest country globally, grappling with prolonged civil war, oil dependency, and severe food insecurity.
It ranks 40th on the Global Competitiveness Index. As of 2025, India ranks third in the world in total number of billionaires. According to the World Bank, India's Gini index fell to 25.5 in 2022‑23, making it the fourth-most equal country globally, suggesting significant progress in income equality.
Iceland. Iceland stands at the top of countries with the lowest poverty rates with a poverty rate of 4.9% in 2021. In 2017, Iceland's poverty rate even hit 0%, according to the World Bank.
Global Multidimensional Poverty Index 2024
The five countries with the most people in poverty are India (234 million), Pakistan (93 million), Ethiopia (86 million), Nigeria (74 million), and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (66 million).
Some figures from the United Nations Development Programme: More than a billion people live with less than a dollar per day. 2.8 billion people, that is to say almost half of the global population, live with less than 2 dollars per day. 448 million children are underweight.
From 1990 to 2025, the total number of people worldwide living in extreme poverty declined from around 2.3 billion to around 831 million. The sharp decline over this period was largely driven by robust, broad-based economic growth in East Asia and South Asia.
As of the second quarter 2024, the average American household had wealth of $1.17 million. The average wealth of households in the top 1 percent was about $35.5 million. In the top 0.1 percent, the average household had wealth of more than $158.6 million.
According to a 2023 study published in JAMA, cumulative poverty of a decade or more is the fourth leading risk factor for death in the United States annually, being associated with 295,000 deaths.
From 2001 to 2017, the daily median income doubled for everyone in the world. While this sounds like an incredible achievement, 85% of the world's population live on less than $30 per day, about 65% live on less than $10 per day and 10% live on less than $1.90 per day.
Bihar is consistently ranked as India's poorest state by metrics like the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) and per capita income, with significant portions of its population in poverty, though figures vary by report and year, often followed by Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh. While these states lag in development, indicating a significant gap with wealthier states like Goa and Kerala, the BIMARU acronym highlights this historical trend, despite some recent growth.
The following 44 countries were still listed as least developed countries by the UN as of December 2024: Afghanistan, Angola, Bangladesh, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, ...
Though there is no official classification as “third-world countries”, if per capita income and India's non-aligned stance during the Cold War era is considered, India can be categorised as one among them, but not in terms of GDP.
Annually, that's roughly ₹45–50 lakh, while the average Indian earns a fraction of it. Even more surprising — to be in the top 1% by net worth, you need assets of just around ₹1.5 crore. The gap between perception and reality of “rich” in India is massive.
The average lifespan of an Indian is about 67.7 years.
In the aggregate socioeconomic index of development, Pakistan has the strongest position in the 3rd world. It is clear from the clustering results that Pakistan, in general, is more similar to the African developing countries than to the countries of her own region.
Among other characteristics, developing or low and medium income countries (as defined by the World Bank) commonly have lower levels of access to safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene, energy poverty, higher levels of pollution (e.g. , air pollution, littering, water pollution, open defecation); higher ...