Many people may have seen a graph like the following, showing a dramatic decline in extreme poverty, which is defined as “living on less than two dollars per day”, over the last two centuries:

The temptation might be to think that the war against extreme poverty has been won and we can now turn our attention to other matters.

However, since 1981, the decline in global extreme poverty is really a Chinese, Indian and Asian success story. In sub-Saharan Africa, the level of extreme poverty (by absolute number of people) has not changed significantly.

There is still plenty to be done, probably on multiple fronts.

Here’s the link to the whole story, in exhaustive detail (which I’ve only skimmed a bit):

https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty

One note, though: poverty seems worst among children.