Over 600 million people to live in poverty by 2050. Rwanda improves but DR Congo and Tanzania slump

Story by Daniel Gerszon Mahler

Over 600 million people around the world will be living in extreme poverty by 2050.

As the Atlas of Global Development 2026 shows, progress in reducing poverty is slowing, and in some places, reversing.

Many of the countries that are home to large populations of poor people have seen little or no progress in the last decade.

Poverty seems to have drastically increased in five countries, including Nigeria, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Pakistan, and Sudan.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Tanzania, have also experienced modest declines.

Some countries have yet to achieve low poverty rates, but are on a promising path.

Rwanda, for example, is estimated to have reduced extreme poverty from 90 percent in the aftermath of the civil war in 1994 to less than 40 percent today, though data limitations complicate precise comparisons.

If it continues this pace of progress, Rwanda will reduce extreme poverty to less than 10 percent by 2050.

And Rwanda is not alone.

It is one of 10 countries, mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa, that are on a pathway to reducing poverty to less than 10 percent by 2050.

The other 43 countries are sliding down.

Livelihoods in Kenya, Pakistan, and Vanuatu are particularly threatened by climate change, while several countries in Southern Africa have some of the world’s highest levels of inequality.

When inequality is high, segments of society face fewer opportunities to climb the economic ladder, which can reduce growth and stall reductions in poverty.

A historic decline in extreme poverty

For decades, the world made remarkable progress in reducing extreme poverty.

This transformation, driven in large part by economic growth, lifted more than a billion people out of poverty.

Over the past several decades, the world has achieved extraordinary progress in reducing extreme poverty.

In 1950, the majority of people globally, that is around 60 percent of the world’s population, lived in extreme poverty, struggling to meet basic needs.

Since then, sustained economic growth, particularly in regions such as East and South Asia, has driven a steady decline, bringing the global extreme poverty rate down to roughly 10 percent today.

About half of the world’s poor live in just eight countries.

And of these, only India has achieved substantial reductions in poverty in the last decade.

Extreme poverty is defined as the proportion of people living below the international poverty line, currently set at US$3 per person, per day.

 Having less than US$3 per person, per day is associated with not satisfying basic needs, such as food and shelter.

Although US$3 may seem low, many households fall below this line, historically and today.

This long-term trend reflects one of the most significant development achievements in history, with hundreds of millions of people lifted out of poverty and improvements seen across many regions.

Countries left behind

Extreme poverty is proving especially persistent in a group of 43 countries where progress has stalled or reversed.

Many of these countries face overlapping challenges — such as conflict, weak institutions, and limited economic opportunities — that make sustained poverty reduction difficult.

This pattern suggests that, while global poverty has declined over past decades, some countries appear caught in a cycle where progress is slow, fragile, and harder to sustain, making the goal of ending extreme poverty increasingly dependent on addressing these deep-rooted constraints.

The poverty rate has fallen across all regions, most significantly in South and East Asia.

Latin America and the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan, and Pakistan also achieved substantial declines—particularly in the earlier decades—but in recent years, extreme poverty in these regions has either stagnated or increased.

There has also been progress in Sub-Saharan Africa, albeit at a slower and less consistent pace.

In the last decade, though, poverty reduction has stagnated, and close to half of the population still lives in extreme poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Poverty could rise again

Looking ahead, there is a growing risk that global poverty could increase rather than continue its long-term decline.

In many of the countries with the highest poverty levels, progress has stalled or reversed, and more than half of the world’s poor now live in places where poverty is not falling. 

If these trends persist, the number of people living in extreme poverty could rise in the coming decades, with projections suggesting that 600 million more people could fall into extreme poverty by 2050 if they continue along their current pathway. 

This marks a significant departure from past decades.

Tackling entrenched challenges including conflict and poor governance will be needed to prevent a future where poverty is on the rise.

If countries manage to progress at the typical speed observed since 1950, global extreme poverty will stand at around 8.5 percent poverty by 2050.

You can read more from the Atlas here