At the higher threshold of ten dollars, the share fell from 74 to 53 percent, according to the analysis by Our World in Data. For the lower threshold of three dollars, the analysis explicitly specifies the years: in 2000, 36 percent of the world's population still lived below it; in 2024, the figure was 10 percent.
The World Bank uses the three-dollar threshold as its official extreme poverty line; people living below it are considered extremely poor in its statistics. Our World in Data itself describes this line as extremely low, saying it draws attention to the living conditions of the world's poorest people. According to the website, the curve for the more recent point in time in the chart is consistently below that for the earlier point in time, regardless of which poverty line is chosen.
What purchasing power-adjusted dollars mean
According to the World Bank, purchasing power parities convert national currencies in a way that accounts for price differences between countries. An international dollar therefore has the same purchasing power everywhere as a US dollar in the United States in a specified base year; according to Our World in Data, the World Bank data use 2021 price levels for this purpose.
Where the figures come from
According to Our World in Data, its data explorer is compiled from the World Bank's Poverty and Inequality Platform, which provides estimates for more than 170 economies, according to the catalog entry. The World Bank updated its global poverty estimates in June 2025, switching from international dollars at 2017 prices to those at 2021 prices. According to the World Bank, the entire historical time series is recalculated when such a change is made. According to the responsible PIP Technical Team, the estimates based on household surveys extend through 2024, while the figures for 2025 and 2026 are model-based estimates.
Progress among employed people, but very uneven across regions
The share of extremely poor people among those in employment has also fallen: according to the SDG report, 7.9 percent of employed people lived on less than three dollars a day in 2025, compared with 11 percent in 2015. In Central and Southern Asia, this rate fell from 15.9 to 5.2 percent over the same period, the largest decline. In sub-Saharan Africa and the least developed countries, by contrast, it fell by around two percentage points to about 40 percent. At a significantly higher threshold of $8.30 a day, almost half the world's population, 3.7 billion people, live below it, according to the World Bank's Poverty, Prosperity, and Planet Report; the World Bank estimates that most of them could fall back into poverty as a result of a shock.
Why the poverty line is not uncontested
Sumner points out that the underlying purchasing power parities are based on infrequent international price surveys in which poorer households' consumption patterns may be underrepresented, which could distort estimates of poor people's living costs. In 2021, the World Bank explained that its purchasing power parities reflected an economy's average consumption and cited studies that had found no significant differences when purchasing power parities were calculated specifically for poor population groups. In Sumner's assessment, the World Bank figures revised in June 2025 shift the level but leave the global trend since 1990 largely unchanged.
The uneven distribution of progress became apparent during the pandemic: extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa rose by two percentage points at the time and, according to the SDG report, only returned to its pre-pandemic level in 2025; Oceania excluding Australia and New Zealand followed the same pattern. At the same time, global development aid grants for poverty reduction fell by 8.7 percent between 2023 and 2024 to $19.1 billion at 2024 prices, returning to the 2015 level, and most recently accounted for 0.02 percent of donor countries' gross national income. For 2030, the report projects that around 9 percent of the world's population will be living in extreme poverty, without yet accounting for the effects of the latest crisis in the Middle East.