Poorest countries in the world

By GNI per capita at PPP, countries such as Burundi, South Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo regularly rank as the poorest. Ongoing conflict, weak infrastructure and dependence on subsistence agriculture keep incomes very low. The precise ranking changes as the World Bank revises its estimates.

Persistent poverty usually stems from a mix of causes: armed conflict, weak or corrupt institutions, limited access to education and healthcare, and economies dependent on a single commodity or subsistence farming. Geography, colonial history and heavy debt also play a role. These factors reinforce each other, which makes low-income traps hard to escape.

Several Sub-Saharan African nations trade places at the bottom, most often Burundi, South Sudan and the Central African Republic when ranked by GNI per capita at PPP. All three have faced prolonged instability that has held back growth. Africa also contains fast-growing economies, so the continent is far from uniformly poor.

Cross-country poverty is most often compared using GNI or GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing power parity, which accounts for differing price levels. The World Bank also sets international poverty lines based on daily consumption to count people living in extreme poverty. This list uses the per-capita income measure to rank whole countries.