Some estimates indicate that 95 million people may have entered extreme poverty in 2020, reported an analysis by the US Congress.
In addition, 80 million more undernourished were generated compared to pre-pandemic levels.
While the full economic impact of the pandemic is focusing more on developed economies where vaccines are facilitating a return to pre-pandemic levels of economic activity, the global impact remains less certain as new viral outbreaks have worsened. the economic impact on some developing economies.
Simultaneously, according to the same analysis, some estimates indicate that world trade could fall by an annual amount of 9.0% or slightly less in 2020 as a result of the global economic recession, which would have an especially high economic cost for emerging economies and in trade-dependent development.
Extreme poverty
Since the beginning of 2021, developed economies have made progress in vaccinating an increasing proportion of their populations, increasing the prospects for recovery in those economies and, in turn, in the global economy as a whole.
However, an increase in diagnosed cases in large developing economies and vaccine resistance among some populations in developed economies raise questions about the speed and strength of a short-term economic recovery.
Extreme poverty is currently measured as people living on less than $ 1.25 a day, although that is unlikely to be the case for long.
According to a document released by the United Nations, the “official” extreme poverty line and the number of people living below it are calculated by a group in the bowels of the World Bank headquarters.
There the group is working on a revision that could have a dramatic impact on the consumption figure in dollars, declared as the “extreme poverty line”, as well as on the number of people living below that threshold.
In the past, the global extreme poverty line established by the World Bank was established to reflect the value of national poverty lines in the world’s poorest countries.
The original 1990 “dollar a day” poverty line was “typical for low-income countries” at the time.
Covid-19
In 2008, it was updated to match the last available average national poverty line of the world’s 15 poorest countries, converted to an exchange rate designed to reflect different prices for the same goods and services across countries.
In the current context, the economic consequences of the pandemic could represent the risk of continued job dislocations as a result of persistent high levels of unemployment not experienced since the Great Depression of the 1930s and high levels of debt among developing economies. .
The infection has sickened more than 174 million people worldwide with more than 3.7 million deaths.
