One of mankind's greatest success stories has quietly come to an end.

After around a billion people escaped extreme poverty over three decades, the Covid pandemic turned the tide.

This is the result of the recently published World Bank report "Poverty and Shared Prosperity".

In 2020, 70 million people slipped into extreme poverty.

That was the largest increase since global poverty was measured.

More than 9 percent of the global population, or 700 million people, now live in extreme poverty.

That means they're on less than $2.15 a day.

There, the World Bank has set the new poverty line, after it had been $1.90 for a long time.

Winand von Petersdorff-Campen

Economic correspondent in Washington.

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The turning point is the result of the Covid pandemic: the poorest people bore the greatest burden.

Incomes in developing countries fell more sharply than in rich countries, with the result that global inequality rose again for the first time in decades.

Poor sections of the population not only lost income, they also suffered the most serious non-material consequences.

They died earlier, were sick longer and more seriously, and had fewer classes.

If politicians do not resolutely take countermeasures, many people would have to accept a loss of income throughout their lives because they entered the workforce with less education.

Developing countries hit hardest

Naturally, poor and rich countries have recovered differently from the pandemic.

The industrialized nations succeeded in preventing the spread of poverty through large spending programs, poorer emerging countries at least partially succeeded, while developing countries did not succeed at all.

Recent increases in food and energy prices have made economic recovery even more difficult.

The shocks of war and the pandemic hit the global economy at a time when growth and poverty-fighting achievements had dwindled.

Since 2015, for example, global poverty has only been falling slowly.

The authors of the World Bank report expect that the great Millennium Goal of eradicating extreme poverty by 2030 can no longer be achieved and that more than half a billion people will then instead be eking out such an existence.

"If we had to make a projection now, we wouldn't reach the target by 2030.

We wouldn't get there by 2100," said Indermit Gill, the World Bank's chief economist.

The World Bank urged governments to do everything in their power to boost economic growth.

"The need for economic growth that boosts the incomes of the poorest could not be greater than it is now," says the report.

World Bank calls for a turnaround in fiscal policy

Extreme poverty is now concentrated in areas where it is particularly difficult to eradicate: in conflict zones, in rural areas and south of the Sahara desert.

60 percent of the poorest are concentrated in the sub-Saharan zone.

The countries would have to achieve economic growth per capita of 9 percent by 2030 in order to end abject poverty.

In the last decade, it has recorded per capita growth of just 1.3 percent.

The World Bank considers a turnaround in fiscal policy to be inevitable given the limited financial leeway in many countries and speaks of a "heroic effort" that would be necessary.

She advocates reducing subsidies and replacing them with targeted transfers to the poor.

Subsidies, such as energy, would often mainly benefit higher earners.

Taxes on greenhouse gases and on land could improve public finances without harming the poor.

The World Bank report joins a series of gloomy forecasts from recent times: the World Trade Organization (WTO) had previously announced stagnation in world trade, with particularly serious consequences for poor countries.

The United Nations had recently warned that central banks could trigger a global recession with the almost synchronous tightening of monetary policy and that poor countries would be particularly hard hit.