English: Measuring global poverty in an unequal world

There is no single definition of poverty. Our understanding of the extent of poverty and how it is changing depends on which definition we have in mind.

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.

For instance, while a person in the United States is counted as being in poverty if they live on less than $27.10 per day, in Ethiopia, the poverty line is set more than ten times lower — at $2.59 per day. You can explore national poverty lines and read more about how they are calculated in this footnote.1

Because the definition of poverty varies so widely, national poverty lines can’t be used to compare poverty across countries. To measure poverty globally, we need to use a poverty line that is applied consistently across all countries.

This is the goal of the International Poverty Line of $3 per day — shown in red in the chart — which is set by the World Bank and used by the UN to monitor extreme poverty around the world.

In global terms, we see that this is an extremely low threshold, set to represent the typical poverty lines adopted in the world’s poorest countries. It marks an incredibly low standard of living — a level of income much lower than just the cost of a healthy diet.

The image features a minimalist design with a light green section on the left and a pale yellow background on the right. There are three horizontal arrows in gray pointing to the right — these are a representation of how the data on global incomes has changed with the. World Bank's update. There is a further, bold arrow that is larger — this is a representation in the change in the International Poverty Line. $3 a day: A new poverty line has shifted the World Bank’s data on extreme poverty. 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 you should know about this data Global poverty data relies on national household surveys that have differences affecting their comparability across countries or over time. In this chart, the data for the United States and Turkey relates to incomes, and the data for the other countries relates to consumption expenditure.2 The poverty lines here are an approximation of national definitions of poverty, made in order to allow comparisons across the countries.1 Non-market sources of income, including food grown by subsistence farmers for their own consumption, are taken into account.3

Data is expressed in international-$ at 2021 prices, which means that inflation and differences in living costs across countries are taken into account.4