Reproducibility package for Beyond The Headcount: The Changing Geography And Composition Of Global Poverty, 2003–2024

Global extreme poverty fell substantially between 2003 and 2024, but progress slowed after 2013 and became increasingly uneven. Using harmonized household surveys for 154 countries, covering about 96 percent of the global population, this paper examines changes in incidence, composition, demographic profile, spatial concentration, and environmental exposure of poverty. The number of people living below $3.00 per day fell from more than 2 billion to 781 million. Yet the remaining poor became increasingly concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa, fragile economies, rural communities, younger populations, groups with limited education, and connected high-poverty subnational regions. In 2024, rural residents account for 73 percent of the extreme poor and children account for 46 percent. Poverty overlaps strongly with drought exposure, although associations with floods, cyclones, and heatwaves are more mixed. Urbanization and educational attainment increased in Sub-Saharan Africa without commensurate poverty reduction, showing that these descriptive correlates do not translate mechanically into progress. Rural residence, limited schooling, and child dependency are most prevalent around the extreme poverty line but remain widespread across much of the lower end of the global income distribution, and distribution-sensitive indicators that capture the entire global distribution confirm the poverty-based rankings.