WASHINGTON (Guardian) -- The end of extreme poverty may finally be achieved by 2050, spurred by economic growth in low-income countries, according to a new economic forecast.
Though the Covid pandemic began to reverse progress in eradicating extreme poverty, and additional challenges will emerge, the damage may have a very limited impact on the overall trajectory of economic growth, according to a Center for Global Development (CGD) report.
“We know the world is going to look very different in 2050, and climate change is a huge concern for the future,” said Charles Kenny, a senior fellow at CGD and one of the report’s authors. “But we can’t let it overshadow the fact that continued economic growth should leave almost no one in the most desperate poverty that was the lot of the vast majority of humanity for most of history, albeit decades after it could have been eradicated.”
Kenny said inequality is likely to remain and poverty will still exist, but higher growth should mean most people have stable employment and incomes, rather than relying on precarious informal labor or subsistence farming. He added that by 2050, no country will be classed as low-income, currently defined as having a GNI per capita of $1,085 (£910) or less.
Kenny, the author of the book Getting Better: Why Global Development is Succeeding, said he and Zack Gehan, who worked with him on the paper, took historical data on income, demographic changes, education and temperature to forecast the future shape of the world economy.
According to the forecast, extreme poverty – living on less than $2.15 a day – would fall below 2% globally by 2050 from about 8% in 2022. In Africa, where it is highest, it would fall from 29% to 7%.
More than two-thirds of the world could be living on more than $10 a day by 2050, up from about 42% today.