Reversals of fortune: World Bank 2020 poverty and shared prosperity report

Hosted by the University of Bath Institute for Policy Research (IPR) and Centre for Development Studies (CDS), and Coventry University's Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations.

The COVID-19 pandemic and its associated economic crisis, compounded by the effects of armed conflict and climate change, are reversing hard-won gains in poverty reduction and shared prosperity.

The fight to end poverty has suffered its worst setback in decades after more than 20 years of progress. The goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030, already at risk before the pandemic, is now beyond reach in the absence of swift, significant, and sustained action.

Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2020: Reversals of Fortune presents new estimates of COVID-19’s impacts on global poverty and shared prosperity. Harnessing fresh data from frontline surveys and economic simulations, it shows that pandemic-related job losses and deprivation worldwide are hitting already poor and vulnerable people hard, while also shifting the profile of global poverty to include millions of “new poor.” These findings call for urgent action.

Co-editor of the report Michael Woolcock joined us, alongside Zainab Mai-Bornu and Santosh Mehrotra, to reflect on what the report reveals about the combined effects of conflict, climate change and the coronavirus pandemic on global poverty and prosperity, prospects for recovery, and on the experience of putting the report together.

Read the report: https://www.worldbank.org/en/publicat....