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COVID-19 pandemic will push 47 million more women & girls into extreme poverty by 2021: UN Reports

3rd-September-2020

The COVID-19 pandemic will disproportionately affect women and push 47 million more women and girls into extreme poverty by 2021, reversing decades of progress to lift this demographic above the poverty line, according to new data released by the UN.

The new analysis by the UN women and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) said the COVID-19 crisis will dramatically increase the poverty rate for women and widen the gap between men and women who live in poverty.


The poverty rate for women was expected to decrease by 2.7 % between 2019 and 2021, but projections now point to an increase of 9.1 % due to the pandemic and its fallout.

The �pandemic will push 96 million people into extreme poverty by 2021, 47 million of whom are women and girls. This will increase the total number of women and girls living in extreme poverty to 435 million, with projections showing that this number will not revert to pre-pandemic levels until 2030,� the UN agencies said.

The projections shows that while the pandemic will impact global poverty generally, women will be disproportionately affected, especially women of reproductive age.
By 2021, for every 100 men aged 25 to 34 living in extreme poverty, there will be 118 women, a gap that is expected to increase to 121 women per 100 men by 2030.