The share of the world’s population living on less than $1.90 a day has been cut by more than half since 2000. The pace of progress has slowed in recent years, however, and is likely to regress with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This paper uses household surveys from 89 countries to look at gender differences in poverty in the developing world. In the absence of individual-level poverty data, the paper looks at what can we learn in terms of