Goal 1 of 17 End poverty in all its forms everywhere.
Global extreme poverty fell from 10.5 per cent of the world's population in 2015 to around 9 per cent in 2022, but the decline has slowed to a near standstill. More than 700 million people still live in extreme poverty, and the risk of falling back into it remains high as shocks — conflict, climate extremes and debt — compound one another.
Work is not always a way out: in 2024, 244 million workers (6.9 per cent of all employed people) still lived below the international poverty line of $2.15 a day, and working poverty is concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Poverty also has a strong rural face — the rural poverty rate remains several times higher than in urban areas.
There has been real progress in protection: in 2023, for the first time, more than half of the world's population (52.4 per cent) was covered by at least one social protection benefit, up from 42.8 per cent in 2015. Yet low-income countries have seen almost no improvement, and about 1.1 billion people still live in slums or informal settlements without secure housing and basic services.
Goal 1 asks for more than income support: nationally appropriate social protection floors, equal rights to economic resources, and resilience to climate and economic shocks are all part of ending poverty by 2030.