Extreme poverty worldwide could be eradicated by 2050, report says

A new paper is predicting that extreme poverty worldwide could end by 2050.

The paper, titled Scenarios for Future Global Growth to 2050, is from the Centre for Global Development. It projects there could be fewer people living in poverty by 2050 than ever in history.

“Continued economic growth should leave almost no one in the most desperate poverty that was the lot of the vast majority of humanity for most of history, albeit decades after it could have been eradicated,” said one author of the paper, Charles Kenny, in a statement.

According to the paper, low-income countries may disappear as a group by that time, with it being plausible that two-thirds of the world will live on over $10 a day, up from 42 per cent currently, and the extreme poverty line — living on $2.15 a day — could be gone by 2050.

The institute notes that eradicating extreme poverty by 2050 would be two decades after the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals hoped it would happen.

Under the models used by the authors, the proportion of the population under extreme poverty will fall to below two per cent by 2050, and from 29 per cent to seven per cent in Africa.

The paper notes that it is still possible for there to be global events that aren’t predictable that could alter its forecasts, but holds that education is likely to be a factor favouring convergence globally as average years of schooling will grow in poorer countries. Climate change is also unlikely to be a major driver of global economic trends up to 2050, according to the paper.

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“For all of the challenges this likely future may present, it is one of a richer planet with more resources to respond to threats from pandemics through climate shocks containing many fewer people living in the kind of absolute poverty that was the lot of ninety percent of humankind for nearly all of our history,” Kenny said in a blog post.

China has been investing heavily in Africa as part of its Belt and Road initiative, putting up nearly USD$3 billion in 2020 to the continent, according to the International Institute of Sustainable Development.