Extreme Poverty in Developing Asian Countries is Decreasing

An Asian Development Bank (ADB) report explains that the contribution of developing Asian countries to extreme poverty is decreasing. According to ADB data, 1.5 billion people in Asia survived on less than US$1.9 per day (the measure of extreme poverty) in 1990.

This figure was equivalent to 79.4% of the world's total extreme poverty. Then, the poverty rate in Asia decreased to 1.2 billion in 1999, or 71.1% of the world's total extreme poverty.

After the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) ended, extreme poverty in Asia fell to 273 million people in 2015. This is equivalent to 36.7% of the world's total extreme poverty.

Finally, in the two years since the launch of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), extreme poverty in Asia further decreased to 202.5 million people, or 29.1% of the total extreme poverty in 2017.

Furthermore, simulations conducted by the ADB show that developing Asian countries would have experienced a stable decline in poverty rates and the number of poor people if the Covid-19 pandemic had not occurred. Under the baseline scenario without Covid-19 in 2020, it is estimated that 104 million people would have been living in extreme poverty (less than $1.90 per day) and 732 million in poverty (less than $3.20 per day).