Our Mission

Recognizing the incompleteness of the so called monetary measure of well-being, this year’s Poverty and Shared Prosperity Report proposes a multidimensional poverty measure. It adds deprivations in education (child school enrollment and adult school attainment) and access to basic infrastructure (drinking water, sanitation and electricity) to the consumption measure to construct a more complete picture of poverty. With this broader definition of poverty, many more people come into view as poor. Read More. 

Between June 2, 2017, and May 1 this year, 128 governments introduced a record 314 reforms benefitting small and medium business and entrepreneurs, enabling job creation, and stimulating private investment. These reforms are tracked – and inspired – by the World Bank Group’s Doing Business Index ranking 190 countries on the ease of doing business within their borders. Read More.

Today, less than 10 percent of the world population lives in extreme poverty. Based on information about basic needs collected from 15 low-income countries, the World Bank defines the extreme poor as those living on less than $1.90 a day. However, because more people in poverty live in middle-income, rather than low-income, countries today, higher poverty lines have been introduced. These lines are $3.20 and $5.50 a day, which are more typical of poverty thresholds for middle-income countries. Read More.

In much of the world today, the incomes of the poor are growing.

Shared prosperity, defined as the average annual growth in income or consumption of the poorest 40 percent (the bottom 40) within each country, was positive in 70 out of the 91 economies for which data is available. In 49 out of these 70 economies, the incomes of the bottom 40 grew faster than the average. Read More.