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A new poverty line shifted the World Bank's poverty data. What changed and why?
In June 2025, the World Bank increased its extreme poverty estimates by 125 million people. This doesn’t mean the world has gotten poorer: it reflects a new, higher International Poverty Line of $3 a day, up from $2.15.
What is important to know here is that this conversion is based on “purchasing power parity” rates (PPPs) — a measure of how much local currency you need in each country to buy the same value of goods and services. Had the IPL only risen in line with inflation — an 11% increase from $2.15 to $2.38 — the World Bank’s new data on global incomes would show roughly 540 million people living in extreme poverty in 2024. We thank Marwa Boukarim for her work designing and producing the article's visualizations and Max Roser, Edouard Mathieu, and Esteban Ortiz-Ospina for their valuable comments and feedback.
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