It is defined as having the same purchasing power as one US-$ would in the United States in a given base year. One int.-$ buys the same quantity of goods and services no matter where or when it is spent. A very bleak future is ahead of us should such weak economic growth in the world’s poorest poorest country in asia countries continue – a future in which extreme poverty is the reality for hundreds of millions for many years to come. In particular, richer and poorer countries set very different poverty lines in order to measure poverty in a way that is informative and relevant to the level of incomes of their citizens. Data from the 2017 International Monetary Fund shows that Afghanistan was the poorest country in Asia with a GDP per capita of $1,889. The second poorest country was Yemen with $2,300 while Nepal was third with about $2,690.
Despite having the fifth-largest economy globally in terms of GDP, about 21% of India’s population (269 million people) lives below the poverty line. Causes for poverty in India include illiteracy, gender discrimination, unequal distribution of wealth, and the country’s ever-increasing population. Syria rarely shares official economic data, so economists must rely on their best estimates—which paint a bleak picture. About 80% of Syrians lived at or below the poverty level as of 2017, a 45% increase since 2007. The main cause of the sharp rise in poverty is the Syrian Civil War, which has destroyed health care infrastructure and educational facilities. Education is one of the best ways out of poverty, and roughly 50% of Syrian children no longer attend school because of the conflict.
Despite these changes, the country is currently among a group of countries that have been classified as the Next Eleven. These countries have the potential of becoming the biggest economies of the 21st century. Interestingly, data shows that periods of martial law in the past have had a positive influence on the economy. The economy depends on sectors and resources including services, industry, agriculture, copper, coal, gold, oil, natural gas, and others. Even though Cambodia has experienced rapid economic growth in the recent past, poverty and inequitable wealth distribution remain significant concerns.
Top 10 poorest countries in Asia (World Bank, by GNI per capita, PPP
Such regional disparities underscore the need for targeted policy measures and international support to uplift those facing the harshest economic conditions and to facilitate sustainable development in these nations. This mountainous nation is burdened by ongoing armed conflict, government corruption, and prolific income inequality. After the United States and United Nations withdrew their troops in mid-2021, the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan’s government. The long-term impact of this change on Afghanistan’s economic situation has yet to be seen.
Top 10 poorest countries in Asia (by GNI per capita, Atlas Method)
However, there is a huge disparity between the poor and the rich, which has contributed to the low GDP per capita. These civil wars have created an opportunity for a few key individuals to amass wealth while most people wallow in poverty. By nearly any measure, Tajikistan consistently ranks as the second- or third-poorest country in Asia. Many skilled people go abroad to search for better work opportunities, leaving Tajikistan with one of the world’s largest remittance economies. Additionally, Tajikistan’s civil war during the 1990s destroyed approximately one-fifth of schools in the country, taking away children’s ability to receive an education, one of the largest factors in reducing poverty.
And while providing a sobering annual stock take of global poverty, the report also highlights examples of success in every region. Such lines are most commonly used in rich countries, and are the main way poverty is measured by the OECD and the European Union. More recently, relative poverty measures have come to be applied in a global context. The share of people living below 50 per cent of median income is, for instance, one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal indicators. And the World Bank now produces estimates of global poverty using a Societal Poverty Line that combines absolute and relative components. Although Pakistan is very rich in natural resources, about 40% of its population lives in extreme poverty.
How does the data account for inflation and for differences in the cost of living across countries?
Several metrics can be used to measure the financial health of a given country, including GDP per capita, GDP per capita (PPP), and GNI per capita. Each method may reorder the countries but pinpoints the same 12 countries as the poorest countries in Asia. The value of relative poverty lines instead rises and falls as average incomes change within a given country. Because of this, relative poverty can be considered a metric of inequality – it measures how spread out the bottom half of the income distribution is.
One important issue is that the survey data included within the PIP database tends to measure people’s income in high-income countries, and people’s consumption expenditure in poorer countries. For the remaining regions and the world, there is still limited data coverage for the respective pandemic years to report poverty estimates. The World Bank’s Poverty and Shared Prosperity Report (PSPR) includes projections of poverty during COVID-19, and a more detailed discussion of the effects of the pandemic and the role of fiscal policy in mitigating adverse effects. To account for inflation and price differences across countries, the World Bank’s data is measured in international dollars. This is a hypothetical currency that results from price adjustments across time and place.
Reasons for this dysfunction include governmental corruption and elitism, religious and secular conflict, and a lack of democratic ideals. The country also spends the largest part of its national budget on defense, allocating only 2.6% of its total GDP to education. An absolute poverty line represents a fixed standard of living; a threshold that is held constant across time. Within the World Bank’s poverty data, absolute poverty lines also aim to represent a standard of living that is fixed across countries (by converting local currencies to international-$). The International Poverty Line of $2.15 per day (in 2017 international-$) is the best known absolute poverty line and is used by the World Bank and the UN to measure extreme poverty around the world. About 26% of Myanmar’s population lives in poverty, particularly in rural areas, where about 70% of the population lives.
The history of the end of poverty has just begun
- Percentage of population (including non-citizens) living on less than $2.15, $3.65 and $6.85 a day in 2017 international (PPP) dollars as per the World Bank and Our World in Data.[1][5][6][2] Sorting is by country code.
- Additionally, Tajikistan’s civil war during the 1990s destroyed approximately one-fifth of schools in the country, taking away children’s ability to receive an education, one of the largest factors in reducing poverty.
- Leading the unfortunate list is Afghanistan, which has a GNI per capita of only $500.
- At the $3.65 poverty line, India accounts for 40% of the slight upward revision of the global poverty rate from 23.6% to 24.1%.
This data explorer is collated and adapted from the World Bank’s Poverty and Inequality Platform (PIP). The interactive dashboard allows data from the revised MPO forecasts to be visualized, compared across countries, and downloaded.
We also include a split of Sub-Saharan Africa into East and West Africa, following the new regional classifications adopted by the World Bank. The estimates for 2017 were first published in September 2020, and this is the first revision. With the new data, the estimate of the global $1.90 headcount ratio increases very slightly, from 9.2% to 9.3%, and the number of poor increases from 689 million to 696 million people. For the regions with sufficient population coverage, the 2018 estimates are updated and new poverty estimates for 2019 are added. The update includes new surveys that have been received and processed, as well as several changes to the existing data. This type of data is important to broaden the coverage of countries where full household surveys are less frequent, such as in fragile and conflict-affected countries.
The poorest in the world are often undernourished, without access to basic services such as electricity and safe drinking water; they have less access to education, and suffer from much poorer health. Lack of income security, economic stability and the predictability of one’s continued means to meet basic needs all serve as absolute indicators of poverty. Poverty may therefore also be defined as the economic condition of lacking predictable and stable means of meeting basic life needs. Its economy is hampered by physical isolation, limited resources, outdated infrastructure, and inadequate institutions. Despite making immense progress against extreme poverty, it is still the reality for every tenth person in the world.
Official estimates for global poverty over the course of the Coronavirus pandemic are not yet available. Percentage of population (including non-citizens) living on less than $2.15, $3.65 and $6.85 a day in 2017 international (PPP) dollars as per the World Bank and Our World in Data.[1][5][6][2] Sorting is by country code. This is a list of countries by percentage of population living in poverty, as recorded by the World Bank and Our World in Data.
The table towards the bottom of this page shows a full ranking of Asian countries based on their economic health. Additionally, the list of the poorest countries in Africa can provide a comparative perspective. There are many challenges to making such adjustments and they are far from perfect. Angus Deaton (Deaton, 2010) provides a good discussion of the difficulties involved in price adjustments and how this relates to global poverty measurement. This lining-up is generally done on the assumption that household incomes or expenditure grow in line with the growth rates observed in national accounts data.