Editing Extreme poverty (section)

===Exacerbating factors===

There are a variety of factors that may reinforce or instigate the existence of extreme poverty, such as weak institutions, cycles of violence and a low level of growth. Recent World Bank research shows that some countries can get caught in a "fragility trap", in which self-reinforcing factors prevent the poorest nations from emerging from low-level equilibrium in the long run.<ref name="worldbank2">World Bank. [http://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/Worldbank/Feature%20Story/Stop_Conflict_Reduce_Fragility_End_Poverty.pdf "Stop Conflict, Reduce Fragility and End Poverty: Doing Things Differently in Fragile and Conflict-affected Situations"]. 2013.</ref> Moreover, most of the reduction in extreme poverty over the past twenty years has taken place in countries that have not experienced a civil conflict or have had governing institutions with a strong capacity to actually govern. Thus, to end extreme poverty, it is also important to focus on the interrelated problems of fragility and conflict.

USAID defines fragility as a government's lack of both legitimacy (the perception the government is adequate at doing its job) and effectiveness (how good the government is at maintaining law and order, in an equitable manner). As fragile nations are unable to equitably and effectively perform the functions of a state, these countries are much more prone to violent unrest and mass inequality. Additionally, in countries with high levels of inequality (a common problem in countries with inadequate governing institutions), much higher growth rates are needed to reduce the rate of poverty when compared with other nations. Additionally, if China and India are removed from the equation, up to 70% of the world's poor live in fragile states by some definitions of fragility. Some analysts project that extreme poverty will be increasingly concentrated in fragile, low-income states like Haiti, Yemen and the Central African Republic.<ref>Nancy Lindborg. [https://web.archive.org/web/20140303211914/http://blog.usaid.gov/2014/02/to-end-extreme-poverty-tackle-fragility/ "To End Extreme Poverty, Tackle Fragility"]. USAID. 13 February 2014.</ref> However, some academics, such as [[Andy Sumner]], say that extreme poverty will be increasingly concentrated in middle-income countries, creating a paradox where the world's poor do not actually live in the poorest countries.<ref>Andy Sumner. [http://www.cgdev.org/sites/default/files/1426481_file_Sumner_where_in_the_world_FINAL_0.pdf "Where Will the World's Poor Live? An Update on Global Poverty and the New Bottom Billion"]. Center for Global Development. September 2012.</ref>

To help low-income earners, fragile states make the transition towards peace and prosperity, the New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States, endorsed by roughly forty countries and multilateral institutions, was created in 2011. This represents an important step towards redressing the problem of fragility as it was originally articulated by self-identified fragile states who called on the international community to not only "do things differently", but to also "do different things".<ref name="pnaec864">USAID. [https://web.archive.org/web/20140714115923/http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/pnaec864.pdf "Ending Extreme Poverty in fragile contexts"]. 28 January 2014.</ref>

Civil conflict also remains a prime cause for the perpetuation of poverty throughout the developing world. Armed conflict can have severe effects on economic growth for many reasons such as the destruction of assets, destruction of livelihoods, creation of unwanted mass migration, and diversion of public resources towards war.<ref name="pnaec864"/> Significantly, a country that experienced major violence during 1981–2005 had extreme poverty rates 21 percentage points higher than a country with no violence. On average, each civil conflict will cost a country roughly 30 years of GDP growth.<ref name="worldbank2"/> Therefore, a renewed commitment from the international community to address the deteriorating situation in highly fragile states is necessary to both prevent the mass loss of life, but to also prevent the vicious cycle of extreme poverty.

Population trends and dynamics (e.g. population growth) can also have a large impact on prospects for poverty reduction. According to the United Nations, "in addition to improving general health and well-being, analysis shows that meeting the reproductive health and contraceptive needs of all women in the developing world more than pays for itself").<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.unfpa.org/resources/population-and-poverty|title=Population and poverty|website=[[United Nations Population Fund]]|language=en|access-date=8 February 2019}}</ref>

In 2013, a prominent finding in a report by the World Bank was that extreme poverty is most prevalent in low-income countries. In these countries, the World Bank found that progress in poverty reduction is the slowest, the poor live under the worst conditions, and the most affected persons are children age 12 and under.<ref>Olinto, Pedro, et al. [http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/files/file/The%20State%20of%20the%20Poor.pdf "The State of the Poor: Where Are The Poor, Where Is Extreme Poverty Harder to End, and What Is the Current Profile of the World's Poor?"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180619000140/http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/files/file/The%20State%20of%20the%20Poor.pdf |date=19 June 2018 }}. ''Economic Premise'' 125.2 (2013).</ref>