Monitoring Desk: Pakistan stands with Djibouti, Syria, and Yemen where people are living below $3 per day income, said World Bank in report released on October 6, 2026.
According to report, Pakistan accounts for about 48% of the people in the region living below the $3 per day (about Rs840 daily income) poverty line while remaining poor people were concentrated in Afghanistan, Syria, and Yemen which together accounted for another 47% of people living below the poverty line of $3 per day income.
The latest World Bank Group estimates showed that the region (MENAAP) accounts for 14% of the world’s extreme poor, second only to Sub-Saharan Africa. After declining substantially during the 2000s and 2010s, poverty reduction stalled around 2019 and reversed following the COVID-19 pandemic. The report said that the regional increase in poverty was driven primarily by a rise in poverty in Pakistan, where the poverty rate rose by 6.4 percentage points at the $3 per day line and 3.2 percentage points at the $4.2 per day line between 2018-19 and 2024-25 following a succession of adverse shocks, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the devastating 2022 floods, a macroeconomic crisis marked by high inflation and currency depreciation, and a prolonged period of economic adjustment that weakened real household incomes and employment opportunities.
