How Badly Is The Pandemic Impoverishing Global Citizens? UN University Research May Be The Answer

Photo illustrations (Khartikeyan K / Unsplash)

JAKARTA - The economic impact of the COVID-19 outbreak could plunge an additional 395 million people into extreme poverty. This means that the number of people living on less than US $ 1.90 or about Rp.26,769 per day worldwide is over 1 billion people. This was explained by the researchers in a report.

Launching Reuters, Friday 12 June, the report was published by the University of the United Nations (UN). The report provides a number of scenarios, taking into account different poverty lines. From extreme poverty defined as living on US $ 1.90 per day or less, to the poverty level living on less than US $ 5.50 or around Rp.77,000 per day.

Under the worst-case scenario - a 20% contraction in income or per capita consumption, the number of those living in extreme poverty could increase to 1.12 billion. The same contraction applied to the US $ 5.50 threshold among upper middle-income countries could see more than 3.7 billion people or more than half of the world's population living below the poverty line.

"The outlook for the world's poorest people looks bleak unless the government does more quickly and makes up for the loss of daily income facing the poor," said Andy Sumner, co-author of the report.

"The result is that progress in poverty reduction can go back 20-30 years and make the United Nations goal of ending poverty look like a dream," added Sumner.

Researchers from King's College London and the Australian National University are also conducting research with the UN University. The researchers found that poverty will shift in its geographic distribution.

The region which is expected to find the greatest number of people at risk of falling into extreme poverty is South Asia, driven mainly by densely populated India. Then followed by Sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia and the Pacific will also contribute extreme poverty figures that are quite large than expected.

Some of the countries named in the report are Nigeria, Ethiopia, Bangladesh and Indonesia. These countries are estimated to experience an additional 18-19 percent of the number of extreme poor people. Meanwhile, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Pakistan, Kenya, Uganda and the Philippines can add 11-12 percent together.

"Taken together, these figures imply that three-quarters of the additional extreme poor globally live in only ten densely populated countries," the report said.