UN: COVID-19 reversing decades of progress on poverty

The COVID-19 pandemic is reversing decades of progress on poverty, healthcare and education, the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs said in an annual report.

According to the Sustainable Development Goals Report 2020, an estimated 71 million people are expected to be pushed back into extreme poverty in 2020, the first rise in global poverty since 1998. 

"Many of these people are workers in the informal economy, whose incomes dropped by 60% in the first month of the crisis. Lost incomes, limited social protection and rising prices mean even those who were previously secure could find themselves at risk of poverty and hunger," the report reads.

Most of this number would be recorded in South Asia and Saharan Africa.