122 million refugees and a new global extreme poverty threshold: how the world is gradually falling below the survival line
The world is increasingly divided not only politically or economically, but also according to the basic criterion – the possibility of survival. In 2025, the World Bank updated the global threshold of extreme poverty: it is now $3 per person per day. According to this new criterion, almost every tenth inhabitant of the planet is officially considered to be living in conditions of extreme poverty. Such an update should hardly be perceived as a technical adjustment. It signals that the cost of living is rising faster than the international community can respond to it. At the same time, humanitarian aid is decreasing, and the number of people in the world who are forced to leave their homes due to war, violence or economic collapse has already exceeded 122 million, which is a sad record for all years of observation. Ukraine, which has been living in a state of full-scale war for the fourth year, is no exception. It became a vivid example of how a military conflict combined with economic instability pushes millions of citizens to the brink of poverty, or even beyond it.
Numbers behind millions of survival stories
In a world where politicians show persistent indifference and global priorities shift to geopolitical reservations, the problem of forcibly displaced people turns into an invisible tragedy. It is not shown in televised briefings, is not discussed at economic forums, and is not mentioned in GDP growth reports. But it exists and is growing every day, like a chronic disease that everyone is used to not paying attention to.
While diplomacy hides behind elaborate communiques, and the governments of the developed world reschedule their budgets in favor of military spending, a silent catastrophe lurks in the shadow of global events. According to the latest figures from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), as of April 2025, the number of people forced to flee their homes due to war, persecution and violence exceeded 122 million. This is an absolute historical maximum. This growth occurred despite the massive return of Syrians to their homeland after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Sudan, Myanmar and Ukraine remain the main centers of humanitarian collapse. Three conflicts, three failures of world diplomacy, turning into three epicenters of the destruction of human destinies.
The UNHCR report states that one of the reasons for the catastrophic increase in the displaced population is “the continued failure to end hostilities.” The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, called the current geopolitical landscape “a time of intense instability” where wars do not just stop, but multiply and become endless sources of suffering. Modern conflicts have long become large-scale humanitarian dramas that produce new waves of refugees even faster than official organizations can count them.
But there is another front that opened without firing a shot — the financial front. In parallel with the record number of displaced persons, the volume of international aid have decreased to the level of 2015, that is, to the time when the number of refugees in the world was almost half. The decrease in UN support was called “brutal and long-lasting”. All this time, while millions of people need basic things, namely food, water, and a roof over their heads, international budgets for humanitarian aid are drying up. This trend is particularly painful given that humanitarian organizations are the last line of defense for refugees trapped in statelessness, vulnerability and danger.
And it is these organizations that work today with a knife at their throats, their task is complicated by the lack of political will to end wars, because diplomacy no longer leads to peace, it leads to prolonging conflicts. The UN does not say specifically which donors have cut funding, but the trends are obvious. The US, which has historically been the largest source of foreign aid, has significantly cut its contributions under Donald Trump’s administration. Great Britain, as well as most European countries, have reallocated resources in favor of defense, leaving the humanitarian sector on the periphery of political attention.
Meanwhile, Swedish researchers state, that 2024 has become the bloodiest year in post-war history. The world has registered 61 active state conflicts, of which 11 have acquired the significance of full-scale wars. This means that at least 1,000 people died in combat in each of them.
The UN openly warns: millions of lives are at risk today. Inadequate funding complicates access to basic services, increases the risks of sexual violence against refugee women, increases the threat of child trafficking, the spread of disease and the overall collapse of displaced persons camps. It is not just about discomfort, but about banal survival.
Living on $3: The New World Standard for Extreme Poverty
At the same time, the World Bank updated the international threshold of extreme poverty: it is now $3 per person per day. This value replaces the previous figure of $2.15, which was in effect from 2022. The calculation of the poverty line is based on data on purchasing power parity (PPP) in different countries. The previous threshold was based on statistics for 2017. This indicator is reviewed regularly, taking into account changes in global prices for basic goods and services, including food, housing and clothing. The new threshold means that individuals who spend less than $3 per day (adjusted for PCP) are considered to be living in extreme poverty. According to the World Bank, in 2022, approximately 838 million people were in such conditions. The forecast for the coming years indicates that by 2030, about 9% of the world’s population will remain in this situation.
Within individual countries, the situation is also worrying. For example, in Great Britain almost 25% of residents are on the verge of poverty. This is stated in the report of the Social Indicators Commission (SMC). The document states that the level of poverty in the country is the highest in the entire period of the XXI century. Since 2019, the situation has worsened against the background of the rising cost of living, and has additionally affected more than two million people. A similar problem is observed in France, especially in its overseas territories. As available assessments, about 40% of their population lives below the poverty line.
Children without a chance and pensioners on the brink: a true portrait of Ukrainian poverty
Against the background of the global picture, Ukraine looks not only a part of a general trend, but is even at the epicenter of intersecting crises: war, inflation, demographic aging and social exhaustion. The international poverty line, adapted to the Ukrainian exchange rate, is about UAH 3,860 per month. According to the official statistics, more than a third of Ukrainian pensioners live according to this indicator. This is more than 3.7 million people — a number that leaves no room for abstractions.
It should be noted that in April 2025, the average pension in Ukraine after indexation increased to UAH 6,341. But this growth turned out to be symbolic. Taking into account inflation at the level of 14.6%, the real purchasing power of pensions has decreased significantly. People receive more hryvnias, but can buy less with them. Statistics also indicate the alarming fact that a third of pensioners living in the country receive less than UAH 3,340 per month. In Ukraine, more than 398,000 people still live on a pension of less than 3,000 hryvnias per month — that’s a little more than $75. With such an amount, it is impossible to pay even basic utilities, not to mention the cost of food or medicine. If we compare these indicators with the updated international standard of extreme poverty – $3 per day – then the arithmetic is very simple: $3 multiplied by 30-31 days gives about $90 of minimum acceptable income, at which the limit of physical survival generally begins. So, Ukrainian pensioners, who are forced to live on $75 a month, actually receive even less than this critical bar. This is not just a low standard of living, but a stable existence below the international poverty line.
If the older generation in Ukraine learns to survive in devalued pensions and ever-increasing prices, the youngest face another form of loss: educational, emotional and social. Every fifth child in Ukraine today grows up in poverty, but the numbers reveal only part of the real picture. By data According to the Institute of Demography and Quality of Life Problems of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Center for Social Reforms, 40% of children live in families where the income per person does not even reach the subsistence minimum. That is, we are talking not only about the absence of “extra”, namely about the absence of the basic.
The situation in the families of internally displaced persons (IDPs) is particularly difficult. Most of them, as evidenced poll within the framework of the project “Help in preparation for the cold weather for families with children who suffered from the war”, they barely make ends meet. Often, families spend most of their income on housing rent, which leaves minimal resources for other needs, including education or proper nutrition. According to the results of the survey, 82% of such families cannot independently provide their children with access to educational services.
More than 300,000 Ukrainian schoolchildren study without laptops, and this is in a country where distance learning has become almost the norm. But it is not only about technology, but about lost chances and an uneven start, which further strengthens the already existing social inequality. Poverty in childhood is not just a lack of a new jacket or textbooks, but a constant encounter with what “others have, but you don’t.” This experience, which forms a feeling of inferiority and isolation from an early age, and also causes childhood trauma, can later build an insurmountable internal barrier that will prevent you from believing in your own abilities for years.
Therefore, poverty is no longer a “problem of third world countries”. It returns to developed societies, takes root in states that are undergoing transformation, and deepens where it was previously considered the usual background.
The world is gradually moving towards a new point of instability. On the one hand, more than 122 million people have already left their homes due to war, violence or economic collapse. On the other hand, almost every tenth inhabitant of the planet officially lives in extreme poverty, that is, spends less than three dollars a day. The war in Ukraine is part of this overall picture: millions of Ukrainians have become refugees, hundreds of thousands have remained at or below the minimum income level. The main danger lies not only in the scale of the numbers, but in the fact that the global system no longer has time to catch these waves – neither through humanitarian programs nor through economic mechanisms of compensation. This creates long-term tensions that turn poverty and mass displacement into permanent factors of international instability.
