Publication: Global Estimate of Children in Monetary Poverty: An Update
Date
2020-10
ISSN
Published
2020-10
Author(s)
Silwal, Ani Rudra
Engilbertsdottir, Solrun
Cuesta, Jose
Newhouse, David
Stewart, David
Abstract
This note builds on previous
collaboration between the World Bank Group and UNICEF to
estimate the global extent of child poverty. We estimate
that in 2017, 17.5 percent of children in the world (or 356
million) younger than 18 years lived on less than 1.90
Dollars PPP per day, as opposed to 7.9 percent of adults
ages 18 and above. The poverty rate of children at the 3.20
Dollars and 5.50 Dollars lines were 41.5 and 66.7 percent,
respectively. The number of children living in extreme
poverty declined by approximately 29 million between 2013
and 2017. In 2017, Sub-Saharan Africa accounted for two
thirds of extremely poor children, and South Asia another 18
percent. These estimates are based on the Global Monitoring
Database (GMD) of household surveys compiled in Spring 2020
and consists of surveys from 149 countries that are also
used for the official World Bank poverty estimates. Because
the estimates pertain to 2017, they do not consider the
adverse economic impact of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic.
Citation
“Silwal, Ani Rudra; Engilbertsdottir, Solrun; Cuesta, Jose; Newhouse, David; Stewart, David. 2020. Global Estimate of Children in Monetary Poverty: An Update. Poverty and Equity Discussion Paper;. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/34704 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”