Despite progress in reducing extreme poverty, nearly half of the world's population lives on less than $ 5.50 a day, in conjunction with rising poverty in richer economies, according to a report by the International Fund.
In its twice-yearly report, the Bank conducted a broader poverty study to identify countries' vulnerabilities, even though the proportion of people living in extreme poverty (who earn less than $ 1.90 a day) has continued to decline in recent years.
Under the expanded criteria for poverty determination, the report states that the number of poor people around the world remains "unacceptably high" while the fruits of economic growth "are unevenly shared in regions and countries," AFP reported.
Even with global growth slowing in the past years, the total number of people living in poverty has fallen by more than 68 million between 2013 and 2015.
Despite the improvement, the report found that current patterns indicate that the Bank's goal of reducing extreme poverty to less than 3 percent of the world's population by 2030 could not be reached.
"Particularly worrying results are that extreme poverty is taking hold in a handful of countries and that the pace of poverty reduction will slow considerably," the report said.
At the threshold of $ 5.50 a day, global poverty dropped to 46 percent from 67 percent between 1990 and 2015.
With the rise of China, East Asia and the Pacific registered a 60-point drop in poverty to 35 percent, but the region is unlikely to continue at that pace due to slower growth.
Poverty is concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa, where 84.5 percent of the population still lives on less than $ 5.50 a day, the report said.
While 60 percent of the world's population two decades ago lives in low-income countries, by 2015 the proportion has fallen to 9 percent.
The World Bank warned that in many of these countries, the poor do not receive a fair share of economic growth.
