The number of extremely poor people in the world has increased

The number of people living in extreme poverty has risen for the first time since 2010, reaching 1.2 billion. This is reported by experts from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).

According to the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index, published by UNDP and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative at the University of Oxford, the number of people living in multidimensional poverty has increased by 51.5 million since the previous report. More than half of them (617 million) are children. The vast majority (83 percent) live in rural areas.

At the same time, 30 of the 89 countries included in the ranking have almost halved their poverty levels in less than 15 years. Among them are Egypt, Nepal, Vietnam and China.

Experts cite population growth as the reason for the rise in poverty.

“In Angola and Zambia, the proportion of the population living in poverty also fell, but the rate of population growth exceeded the rate of poverty reduction, resulting in the total number of poor people still increasing,” the UN explained.