Education and urbanization alone may not end global extreme poverty Minh Cong NguyenNishant YonzanBen BrunckhorstSotaire KwizeraChristoph LaknerGabriel Lara IbarraHenry Stemmler October 28, 2026 This page in: English

https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/opendata/education-and-urbanization-alone-may-not-end-global-extreme-pove Counting the number of people living in extreme poverty — on less than $3 a day — is only part of the picture. We also need to understand who they are, where they live, and how their circumstances have changed. A new paper using household surveys from 154 economies, covering 96 percent of the world’s population, examines the characteristics of people living in extreme poverty from 2003 to 2024. Although extreme poverty has declined worldwide, it is increasingly concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa, fragile economies, rural communities, younger populations, and people with limited education. Advances in urbanization and education — both strongly associated with poverty reduction in East and South Asia—have produced much smaller gains in Sub-Saharan Africa.