Over a quarter of a billion people will be pushed into poverty in 2022, Oxfam finds

Over a quarter of a billion people will be pushed into poverty in 2022, says the Oxford Committee for famine relief (Oxfam) in a recent report.

Oxfam said this poverty is justified by different factors, including the COVID-19 pandemic, rising global inequality, and the soaring of global food prices, amplified by the geopolitical crisis between Russia and Ukraine.

The report, entitled “First the Crisis, Then the Catastrophe,” was released at the spring meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in Washington.

It showed that 860 million people will be living in extreme poverty by the end of the year, as “they may be forced to live on less than $1.90 a day,” mirroring world hunger figures, considering the number of undernourished people could rise up to 827 million by the end of 2022.

Additionally, many people struggle to cope with soaring living costs, and are already facing severe hunger, heat, and medical expenses, mainly in East Africa, the Sahel, Yemen, and Syria, Oxfam specified.

People living in underprivileged conditions are hit the hardest, especially with rising global prices, up 40% in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the same source.

Even within wealthy economies, inflation exacerbates inequality in the US, 20% of poor households spend 27% of their income on food, while 20% of rich people spend only 7%.

The World Bank estimated that COVID-19 will push up 198 million people into extreme poverty by 2022, assuming that the Gini index of income inequality increased by 2% worldwide.

The IMF, the World Bank, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) agree that COVID-19 is likely to increase inequality significantly.

Oxfam’s new estimates, based on World Bank projections and previous research by the World Bank and the Center for Global Development on food price spikes showed that an additional 65 million people could fall below the $1.90 a day poverty line as a result of sharp increases in food prices.