Worldwide, extreme poverty has declined steadily since the 1980s. But the fact that hundreds of millions of people still have to survive on less than $2 a day means we aren’t in the streets celebrating this as a complete success.

What has happened over time?
The share of people in the world living in extreme poverty has decreased steadily over the last 40 years. Huge countries like China, India and Nigeria became middle-income countries in this time. But that change happens over years rather than days or weeks, so it gets little attention from the news media.

What is extreme poverty?
It is living on less than $2 a day (or actually less than $2.15). It means having too little money to meet the basic needs that most of us take for granted, such as food, water, electricity and basic healthcare.

Where do people in extreme poverty live?
Roughly half of them live in Africa and half in Asia. You can see their homes on Dollar Street: https://www.gapminder.org/dollar-street/?max=66

Where can I learn more?
You can see how countries moved out of poverty here: https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$state$time$value=2015;&marker$axis_y$which=extreme_poverty_percent_people_below_190_a_day&domainMin:null&domainMax:null&zoomedMin:null&zoomedMax:null&spaceRef:null;;;&chart-type=bubbles
You can visit homes and see what life is like for people living in extreme poverty in Dollar Street: https://www.gapminder.org/dollar-street/?topic=homes&media=image&max=59
Read more about extreme poverty at Our World In Data: https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty#:~:text=As%20we%20can%20see%2C%20globally,million%20every%20year%20since%201990

Africa is a vast continent and each country is different. Yet people often seem to stereotype everyone in Africa as victims. The perception that “Africa cannot feed itself” can lead people to believe it’s not worth investing in Africa. There can be resistance to even try to increase productivity in African agriculture, because the continent is perceived to be doomed from the start. The reality is different! African countries do produce their own crops, but their ability to keep producing more food is sensitive to climate change. That needs to be taken very seriously as the world becomes warmer.

The images we see of hungry people in extreme poverty are not fake, but they are not representative of an entire continent of a billion people. There are very poor people who do rely on food aid, but a lot of the food imported from abroad is due to choice rather than necessity.

North Africa is where most food is imported. Egypt has been importing a lot of wheat, partly because it has sold bread at a subsidised low price. All North African countries import maize to feed chickens. And barley imports have been booming, due to an increase in breweries making beer! People in other parts of Africa (mostly in urban areas) also prefer rice and want to eat instant noodles, pasta and fried chicken instead of traditional local staples – which make up a big share of the imported food.

Why are people wrong about this?
If you don’t live in Africa, you hear the media talk about it as if it’s a country instead of a continent. The images we often see are from disasters, diseases, wars, terror and hunger. It creates an image in our heads of a place where nothing works and where Africa depends on the rest of the world sending food and trained staff to come to their rescue. In fact, in most countries, economic growth has been happening faster over the past couple of decades than in Europe.

Why is it a problem that people are wrong about this?
It’s true that Africa as a continent has a lot of extreme poverty and still struggles with many problems. But, in most cases, countries in Africa have enough educated people to take care of most of their own problems. Many people have an incredibly outdated view of Africa that is damaging not just to African people, governments and businesses, but also to the people holding those outdated views. It means they will miss out on incredible opportunities to work, study, travel and invest in vibrant, modernising countries.

Can I trust this data?
Yes, but like any average, the overall figure can hide big differences between individual countries and regions. For example, a lot more of the food eaten by people in North Africa is imported rather than grown there, compared to Sub-Saharan Africa. The data we use comes from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The main source is official statistics from member countries which is collected yearly. The figure refers to the weight of food produced, as opposed to the calories consumed. Gapminder consulted several independent experts for this question who pointed out the differences between food requirements versus food choices and how there are different scenarios across the African continent. Despite the caveats, the experts agreed that the FAO data is trustworthy and the most reliable available.

Resources
Dollar Street: See plates of food: https://www.gapminder.org/dollar-street/?topic=plates-of-food&regions=af from different income levels in many countries in Africa

Giving birth in a health facility helps prevent serious illness and deaths from complications, for mothers and babies alike, if there is the right equipment and trained medical staff. The share of babies born in health facilities in India increased from about 52% in 2008 to around 89% by 2021.

This is progress, but the training of staff and the quality of facilities and equipment needs to improve even more if there is going to be continuing decreases in maternal mortality.

Renewable energy from sources like solar, wind, and hydro power made up a quarter of the electricity production in Nigeria in 2022. This share has been increasing over the last eight years, with just 17% of Nigeria’s electricity coming from non-fossil fuels in 2014. Nigeria’s progress in producing cleaner electricity put them just below the global figure of 30% in 2022.