The Statistics of Poverty

Poverty has been a problem in the world as far back as time goes. We have been overcoming poverty as a whole since 1990. In 1990 the poverty rate was 36% compared to the poverty rate in 2019 which was 9.2%. This is still a major problem because this 9.2% survives on a $1.90 or less per day. As we are taking huge leaps to fight poverty, COVID-19 might reverse all of the positive strides we have taken. The pandemic has had a negative impact on the world. The unemployment rate for the United States in 2020 was 3.2 percent, after the pandemic, the unemployment rate skyrocketed to 13 percent. The United States is not the only place to be affected by the pandemic. Another place where the pandemic affected their economy and poverty rates was Indonesia. “The poverty rate will increase from 9.2% in September 2019 to 9.7% by the end of 2020, pushing 1.3 million more people into poverty. Under the worst-case scenario, the poverty rate will increase to 16.6%, close to the level seen in 2004 when the poverty rate was 16.7%. This means that 19.7 million more people will become poor, substantially reversing Indonesia’s progress in reducing poverty. The implication is that Indonesia will need to expand its social protection programs to assist the new poor as well as the existing poor.”(Suryahadi). This article is giving the percentage of the poverty rate before and after the pandemic. These numbers show the drastic change in the poverty rate in Indonesia throughout the pandemic.

This is a visual graph of the impact COVID-19 has on extreme poverty. Extreme poverty is defined as someone living on $1.90 or less per day. As you can see from the graph above we have been on a steady decline from 2015 and 2020 in the poverty rate. However, because of the pandemic, the numbers have skyrocketed back up, compared to the pre-Covid projections. This graph demonstrates how covid has had a direct correlation with poverty rates. After looking at these graphs and realizing how bad of an issue poverty is. We will take further steps to help fight poverty and get back to a downward trend in the poverty rate. To fix poverty we need to start off with building resilience, an example of this is making sure the less fortunate countries are prepared for conflicts in their lives like the pandemic. We will go further into solutions to solve poverty in the next post.

References

Asep Suryahadi, Ridho Al Izzati & Daniel Suryadarma (2020) Estimating the Impact of Covid-19 on Poverty in Indonesia, Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, 56:2, 175–192, DOI: 10.1080/00074918.2020.1779390