Who are the world’s poor? This paper presents a new global profile of multidimensional poverty using three specifications of multidimensional poverty.

This paper revisits, with new data, the changes in the distribution of global poverty towards middle-income countries (MICs). It outlines the distribution of global poverty as follows: half of the world’s poor live in India and China, a quarter of the world’s poor live in other MICs (primarily populous lower MICs such as Pakistan, Nigeria and Indonesia) and a quarter of the world’s poor live in the remaining 35 low-income countries.

This paper offers a new perspective on global poverty. It does so by estimating the distribution of poverty across countries, regions and income categories based on national poverty lines (NPLs).

This paper argues that the global poverty problem has changed because most of the world’s poor no longer live in poor countries meaning low-income countries (LICs).