The Poverty and Shared Prosperity series provides a global audience with the latest and most accurate estimates on trends in global poverty and shared prosperity. For more than two decades, extreme poverty was steadily declining. Now, for the first time in a generation, the quest to end poverty has suffered its worst setback.

Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2020: Reversals of Fortune provides new data and analysis on the causes and consequences of this reversal and identifies policy principles countries can use to counter it. The report presents new estimates of COVID-19’s impacts on global poverty and inequality. 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 partly changing the profile of global poverty by creating millions of “new poor.” Furthermore, the report breaks ground by jointly analyzing three factors whose convergence is driving the current crisis and will extend its impact into the future: the COVID-19 pandemic, armed conflict, and climate change.

The report is available from the World Bank website.