Extreme poverty

The poorest 10% of households would have had to increase their spending by more than 16% to keep food and energy consumption constant between 2019 and February 2024. The same figure for the richest 10% is under 6%.

In 2024, over halfway to the 2030 deadline for the Sustainable Development Goals, as we commemorate International Women's Day, it is crucial to reflect on our collective journey towards gender equality and envision the path ahead.

The COVID-19 pandemic, the cost-of-living crisis and the war in Ukraine have pushed 165 million people into poverty since 2020, the United Nations has said, calling for a pause in debt repayments for developing countries.

In a grim report, the U.N. has warned that at the current rate of global progress 575 million people will still be living in extreme poverty and 84 million children won't be going to school in 2030 - and it will take 286 years to reach equality between men and women.

The world population reached 8 billion already at the end of last year. The UN predicts that between 2050 and 2060 there will be 10 billion people on the planet. After that, experts predict a decline or stagnation of the population. The fastest-growing population is in the poorest countries. In Bulgaria, as everywhere in Europe, the trend is downward.

Torn down by growing debt and a barrage of crises, leaders of the world's poorest countries have stepped up calls for the rules governing handouts of billions of dollars to be rewritten.

Western nations gave out more than $185 billion in grants and cheap loans in 2021, according to the OECD. Official development assistance is one of the pillars of the international financial system.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has accused the world's rich nations and energy giants of squeezing poor countries with "predatory" interest rates and "crushing" fuel prices. Speaking to leaders of more than 40 countries in need, at a conference in Doha, Guterres said rich nations should provide $500 billion a year in aid:

The Covid pandemic has created a new billionaire every 30 hours and now one million people could fall into extreme poverty at the same pace, Oxfam said Monday as the Davos summit returns.

Bulgaria's caretaker government plans to increase all pensions from 1 October this year, announced Finance Minister Asen Vassilev, adding that if parliament supports his proposals, no pensioners in Bulgaria will be living below the poverty line by autumn.

The pandemic could push as many as 32 million people in the world's least developed countries into extreme poverty, a new UN report has said. Without international action, global development goals will be missed.