The number of people living in acute poverty worldwide has risen to 1.2 billion, marking the first increase in the global poverty index since its introduction in 2010, according to a report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) released on Monday.
The 2026 edition of the annual report, jointly produced by the UNDP and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, found that 51.5 million more people were living in acute poverty than in the previous year’s assessment.
UNDP Administrator Alexander De Croo described the increase as a “wake-up call for the world,” warning that billions of people continue to face overlapping forms of deprivation.
“Behind these figures are 1.2 billion people facing hardships that reinforce one another: hunger, missed schooling and a lack of clean water or electricity. This is unacceptable,” he said in a press release.
Children account for more than half of those living in acute poverty, highlighting the disproportionate impact of deprivation on younger populations.
However, the UNDP cautioned that population growth was a major factor behind the increase in the total number of people affected. It also noted that new data were available for only 13 of the 108 developing countries covered by the report.
Despite the global increase, the findings present a mixed picture of progress in tackling poverty. According to the report, 33 countries have halved the proportion of their populations living in multidimensional poverty over the past 15 years.
Six of those countries are in sub-Saharan Africa, while China and Vietnam were among the Asian countries that recorded some of the fastest progress, the UNDP said.
As in the previous year’s report, sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia accounted for the largest shares of people living in acute poverty.
The report also highlighted progress in several countries, noting that poverty rates and the number of people experiencing multidimensional poverty had fallen significantly in Egypt, Nepal and Tajikistan.
In Angola and Zambia, however, the proportion of people living in poverty declined while population growth more than offset those gains, resulting in an increase in the overall number of people affected.
The global Multidimensional Poverty Index measures overlapping forms of deprivation, including inadequate housing, poor sanitation, lack of electricity and clean cooking fuel, food insecurity and limited access to education.
The findings underscore the complexity of addressing global poverty, as improvements in living conditions do not always translate into a reduction in the total number of people affected.
AFP
