This report presents a compact update on the state of multidimensional poverty (henceforth referred to as “poverty”) in the world. It compiles data from 110 developing countries covering 6.1 billion people accounting for 92 percent of the population in developing countries. It tells an important and persistent story about how prevalent poverty is in the world and provides insights into the lives of poor people their deprivations and how intense their poverty is—to inform and accelerate efforts to end poverty in all its forms. As still only a few countries have data from after the COVID-19 pandemic the report urgently calls for updated multidimensional poverty data. And while providing a sobering annual stock take of global poverty the report also highlights examples of success in every region.

Without tackling biased gender social norms we will not achieve gender equality or the Sustainable Development Goals. Biased gender social norms—the undervaluation of women’s capabilities and rights in society—constrain women’s choices and opportunities by regulating behaviour and setting the boundaries of what women are expected to do and be. Biased gender social norms are a major impediment to achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls. Gender bias is a pervasive problem worldwide. The Gender Social Norms Index (GSNI) quantifies biases against women capturing people’s attitudes on women’s roles along four key dimensions: political educational economic and physical integrity. The index covering 85 percent of the global population reveals that close to 9 out of 10 men and women hold fundamental biases against women. Nearly half the world’s people believe that men make better political leaders than women do and two of five people believe that men make better business executives than women do. Gender biases are pronounced in both low and high Human Development Index (HDI) countries. These biases hold across regions income level of development and cultures—making them a global issue.

New data and analysis in the report New Threats to Human Security in the Anthropocene shows that people’s sense of safety and security is at a low in almost every country including the richest countries despite years of upwards development success. Those benefiting from some of the highest levels of good health wealth and education outcomes are reporting even greater anxiety than 10 years ago. To tackle this disconnect between development and perceived security the report calls for greater solidarity across borders and a new approach to development; one that allows people to live free from want fear anxiety and indignity. The imperative to act now has never been more clear as new findings also show that global life expectancy at birth is falling for a second year because of COVID-19 and overall human development measures are also moving downward. Furthermore climate change is likely to become a leading cause of death around the world. Even with moderate mitigation of emissions some 40 million people might die because of changes in temperatures before the end of the century. The report examines a cluster of threats that have shifted to become more prominent in recent years including those from digital technologies inequalities conflicts and the ability of healthcare systems to tackle new challenges like the COVID-19 pandemic. Addressing these threats will require policy makers to consider protection empowerment and solidarity alongside one another so that human security planetary considerations and human development all work together and not despite each other. This means that solutions for one problem shouldn’t exacerbate other problems. The report also notes the strong association between declining levels of trust and feelings of insecurity. People with higher levels of perceived human insecurity are three times less likely to find others trustworthy.

The COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic is unleashing a human development crisis. On some dimensions of human development conditions today are equivalent to levels of deprivation last seen in the mid-1980s. But the crisis is hitting hard on all of human development’s constitutive elements: income (with the largest contraction in economic activity since the Great Depression) health (directly causing a death toll over 300000 and indirectly leading potentially to an additional 6000 child deaths every day from preventable causes over the next 6 months) and education (with effective out-of-school rates – meaning accounting for the inability to access the internet – in primary education expected to drop to the levels of actual rates of the mid-1980s levels). This not counting less visible indirect effects including increased domestic violence yet to be fully documented. The pandemic was superimposed on unresolved tensions between people and technology between people and the planet between the haves and the have-nots. These tensions were already shaping a new generation of inequalities— pertaining to enhanced capabilities the new necessities of the 21st century as defined in the 2019 Human Development Report. But the response to the crisis can shape how those tensions are addressed and whether inequalities in human development are reduced. This note takes a capabilities approach to document the severity of the unfolding human development crisis. Such an approach implies an evaluative framework to assess the crisis and shape the policy response that emphasizes the potential for people to be and do what they aspire in life as opposed to material resources or economic activity. To assess the crisis the note draws from original simulations that are based on an adjusted Human Development Index— with the education dimension modified to reflect the effects of school closures and mitigation measures—and that incorporate current projections of gross national income (GNI) per capita for 2020.

This report focuses on how multidimensional poverty has declined. It provides a comprehensive picture of global trends in multidimensional poverty covering 5 billion people. It probes patterns between and within countries and by indicator showcasing different ways of making progress. Together with data on the $1.90 a day poverty rate the trends monitor global poverty in different forms. This is a key moment to study how nonmonetary poverty goes down. It is 10 years before 2030 the due date of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) whose first goal is to end poverty in all its forms everywhere. And it is a year when a pandemic and economic slowdown are pushing many more into poverty while the spectre of racism still haunts and environmental threats such as locusts surge. Multidimensional poverty is strongly associated with other SDG challenges. Concentrated in rural areas multidimensionally poor people tend to experience lower vaccination rates and secondary school achievement insecure work and greater environmental threats. By detailing the connections between the MPI and other poverty-related SDGs the report highlights how the lives of multidimensionally poor people are precarious in ways that extend beyond the MPI’s 10 component indicators. The COVID-19 pandemic unfolded in the midst of this analysis. While data are not yet available to measure the rise of global poverty after the pandemic simulations based on different scenarios suggest that if unaddressed progress across 70 developing countries could be set back 3–10 years.