Half of planet’s poor live in India, Nigeria, DR Congo, Ethiopia & Bangladesh: Report

World Bank’s new report is quite shocking! It says that of the planet’s 736 million extreme poor in 2015, 368 million—half of the total—lived in just 5 countries. The 5 countries with the highest number of extreme poor are: India, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, and Bangladesh (in descending order).

The named countries are the most populous countries of South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, the two regions that together account for 85 percent (629 million) of the world’s poor. Hence, to make significant continued progress towards the global target of reducing extreme poverty (those living on less than $1.90 a day) to less than 3 percent by 2030, large reductions in poverty in these five countries will be crucial, The World Bank published.

India has the highest number of poor people and accounts for nearly a quarter of global poverty with more than 170 million poor people in 2015. In the South Asia region, four out of five extreme poor reside in India. Despite a poverty rate of 13.4 percent, India’s large population of 1.3 billion results in a high number of extremely poor, NBE noted.

When projections are based on countries growing in line with past growth rates (the regional average over the last ten years), extreme poverty in India and Bangladesh approaches zero by 2030 but extreme poverty in Nigeria, DRC, and Ethiopia remains quite elevated. The uneven progress across these 5 countries is indicative of the broader uneven progress globally. An outcome where extreme poverty is nearly eliminated throughout the world except in one region, sub-Saharan Africa, certainly does not portray a picture of a world free of poverty.