World Bank estimates 21 million to be out of Covid-induced poverty
Aditi Tandon
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, September 15
The World Bank on Wednesday cut back on Covid-induced poverty estimates by 21 million saying the global poverty may be turning the corner on the pandemic in 2021, but warned that the number of the poor on account of Covid was still unprecedented.
“In 2021, we project global poverty to decrease by about 21 million people compared with 2020. The implications of this estimate are that global poverty is projected to decline, and the pace of reduction is returning to the pre-pandemic trend. In that sense, one could say that global poverty may be turning the corner on the pandemic in 2021,” the World Bank said in its latest estimations.
Still unprecedented
We find that the pandemic led to 97 mn more people being in poverty in 2020. This is a reduction of about 21 mn from our last estimate. Even this reduced estimate represents an unprecedented increase in poverty.
Basing its calculations of pandemic-induced poverty estimates on the latest growth forecasts available from the Global Economic Prospect (GEP) and the pre-pandemic counterfactual from the January 2020 GEP forecasts, the World Bank had, in January 2021, estimated that Covid would push between 119 and 124 million people into extreme poverty around the globe in 2020.
But revising these numbers based on updates to global poverty data that occurred in March and June and on the recently launched growth forecasts from the June 2021 version of the GEP, the Wrold Bank today said: “We find that the pandemic led to 97 million more people being in poverty in 2020. This is a reduction of about 21 million from our last estimate. Even this reduced estimate represents a historically unprecedented increase in global poverty.”
“Because the pace of reduction is similar to what we expected before the pandemic spread, the recovery taking place will not be sufficient to close the gap the pandemic is estimated to have caused in 2020. Globally, the increase in poverty that occurred in 2020 due to Covid still lingers,” the World Bank said.
