“Three out of four countries are expected to have had a decline in poverty between 2021 and 2024. That headline hides significant variation, but it signals that a broad recovery took hold after the pandemic-era reversals.

Nearly all countries in Europe and Central Asia (ECA), East Asia and Pacific (EAP), and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) recorded declines in poverty.  These results are driven primarily by economic growth, which was positive for 81% of countries in 2024. This growth trend also extends to the years leading up to 2025. Between 2021and 2024, the average GDP growth rate was positive for 86% of countries.

The picture is mixed in low-income countries and in the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan (MENAAP) and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) regions. About half of low-income countries (11 of 21), half of countries in MENAAP (4 of 8) and 40% of countries in SSA (18 of 46), are expected to have experienced rising poverty during this period. FCV countries faced the worst outcomes: only about one-third (8 of 23) saw improvements…

In 2025, 80% of countries are expected to see poverty fall, which if materialized would be the largest share of countries with declining poverty in 10 years. This progress also extends to low-income countries and FCV countries where 75% and 70% of countries, respectively, are expected to experience drops in poverty rates.

Notably, the projected improvement in household welfare is a result of the MPO model predicting that economic growth will be passed down to households. In 2025, 85% of countries are predicted to have a real increase in GDP growth rate, which tracks closely to the 80% of countries expected to witness declines in poverty.”

From World Bank.

“India surprised forecasters last year. While much of the global economy slowed under the weight of high interest rates and geopolitical uncertainty, the world’s most populous country grew upwards of 7 per cent. Inflation has fallen sharply, and the external deficit remains modest…

Has the Indian economy finally shifted on to a structurally higher growth trajectory?

There is a plausible case that something has changed. India has long oscillated between two uncomfortable states: rapid expansion accompanied by inflation and external imbalances, or macroeconomic stability achieved at the cost of slower growth. Recent performance appears to sit between these extremes.

Improved macroeconomic management is part of the story. India formally adopted inflation targeting in the past decade, and monetary policy has since been more predictable and transparent. Fiscal policy, while hardly tight, has become more credible, with an explicit medium-term consolidation path and a sharper distinction between day-to-day spending and public investment. On the external front, India is less reliant on foreign capital to finance growth than in the past — an important change for a country with a history of balance-of-payments pressures.

Structural reforms reinforce the optimistic reading. A nationwide goods and services tax has reduced internal trade barriers in what was once a fragmented market. New bankruptcy rules have disciplined creditor behaviour and improved capital reallocation, even if enforcement remains uneven. Perhaps most striking for outsiders is India’s digital public infrastructure. National biometric identification, real-time payments and interoperable digital platforms have sharply lowered transaction costs, deepened financial inclusion and strengthened the state’s ability to deliver services.

There are also early signs that India’s supply side has become more responsive. Large public investment in roads, ports and logistics has eased bottlenecks that once caused growth accelerations to spill quickly into inflation. Targeted incentives have begun to attract manufacturing investment into electronics, renewables and other tradeable sectors. If supply can respond more smoothly to rising demand, higher growth need not be destabilising — a prerequisite for any lasting structural shift.”

From Financial Times.

“Populists on both the political left and right routinely claim that the middle class has been hollowed out. These claims, to the extent they are based on evidence, rely on a relative definition of the middle class, such that if income doubles for every family, the middle class does not grow. Using an absolute definition of the middle class, we find that the “core” middle class has shrunk, but only because more families have become upper-middle class over time. The upper-middle class boomed from 10 percent of families in 1979 to 31 percent in 2024, and its share of income doubled. The share of families whose income left them short of the core middle class fell from 54 percent to 35 percent. Claims of a hollowed-out middle class wrongly reinterpret widespread (if unequal) gains across the income distribution as rising insecurity and declining living standards.”

From American Enterprise Institute.

“The poverty rate in Buenos Aires City in of the third quarter of last year fell to 17.3 percent, affecting some 534,000 individuals – a drop by 10.8 percentage points from the same period of 2024.

Data released by the City government this week also showed that extreme poverty fell to 5.3 percent of residents in the capital, or some 164,000 people, as against the 11 percent observed a year ago.

Measured by households, 13.7 percent were considered poor in the third quarter of 2025, with four percent classified as in extreme poverty.”

From Buenos Aires Times.