Efforts to combat global poverty remain unchanged for the second consecutive year in part because of severe cutbacks in American international aid, according to the director of the newly released “2025 Fordham Pope Francis Poverty Report.”
“Something has shifted, and it’s the U.S. government that is turning away from the fight against global poverty, and the other countries in Europe say they are focusing more on the problem in Ukraine,” Henry Schwalbenberg said in an interview with National Catholic Reporter. “That makes me think that the key thing you need to do now is more advocacy. We have to kind of push against the tide and say we have to focus on it.”
The Fordham report found the global poverty gap remained at 25.5% from 2024 to 2025 — meaning just over a quarter of the world’s population lacks access to adequate water, food, housing, employment, education, gender equity and religious freedom.
“On the positive side, recent one-year trends show the gaps in access to water, adequately remunerated employment and education have narrowed. On the negative side, the gaps in access to housing and gender equity have not improved. And on the more distressing side, the gaps in access to food and religious freedom have widened.”
The findings echo Pope Leo XIV’s new papal document, “I Have Loved You,” which criticized social and economic systems that benefit the prosperous at the expense of the poor: “Thus, in a world where the poor are increasingly numerous, we paradoxically see the growth of a wealthy elite, living in a bubble of comfort and luxury, almost in another world compared to ordinary people.”
Leo added that “a culture still persists — sometimes well disguised — that discards others without even realizing it and tolerates with indifference that millions of people die of hunger or survive in conditions unfit for human beings.”
The report was released at the conclusion of a year that saw the Trump administration’s massive restructuring of foreign aid by dissolving the U.S. Agency for International Development, pausing existing aid programs, freezing payments and severely cutting back on spending.
“We are reorienting our foreign assistance programs to align directly with what is best for the United States and our citizens,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in March. “We are continuing essential lifesaving programs and making strategic investments that strengthen our partners and our own country.”
But church and social groups must prioritize efforts to help people escape cycles of poverty, lack of education and gender inequality, the late Pope Francis I said in a 2015 United Nations address outlining his global poverty index.
“At the same time, government leaders must do everything possible to ensure that all can have the minimum spiritual and material means needed to live in dignity and to create and support a family, which is the primary cell of any social development,” he said.
“In practical terms, this absolute minimum has three names: lodging, labor and land; and one spiritual name: spiritual freedom, which includes religious freedom, the right to education and all other civil rights.”
Water
The Fordham study found 8.8% of the world population suffered from lack of water in 2022, meaning 707 million people were without a water source within a 30-minute round trip.
Francis argued “it is not enough for the marginalized to have access to any type of water. The water should be clean and readily accessible when needed, without undue burden.”
The figure represents a significant improvement from 2013 when more than 12% lacked sufficient access to water. The report also found nine of the 10 nations with the highest limits on water were Africa, led by the Democratic Republic of Congo (64.9%), the Central African Republic (63.7%) and South Sudan (58.8%).
Malnutrition
An estimated 730 million people, or just more than 9% of the world’s population, were malnourished in 2022, continuing a series of annual increases from 7.5% in 2018, the study found.
Somalia (51.3%), Haiti (50.4%), and Madagascar (39.7%) led the list of 10 nations in Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and the Western Hemisphere with the least access to food that year in 2022.
Housing
Researchers estimated about 1.3 billion people, or 16.4% of the global population, lived in sub-standard housing in 2023, the third straight year at that level following a drop from nearly 26% in 2020.
“People require adequate physical space to create safe, secure and nurturing homes for their families. Adequate housing with secure tenure can also provide households with regular access to basic sewage, safe drinking water, garbage collection and electricity,” the report states.
Chad (80.4%), Central African Republic (75.5%) and Burundi (70.6%) led the list of 10 countries most deprived of adequate housing.
Wages
“We estimate that in 2024, approximately 810 million adults, or about 21.4% of the world’s labor force, lack paid employment above subsistence-level wages,” researchers said. “The improvement in the global employment situation since the COVID-19 year of 2020 has slowed down.”
African nations again led in this category, with the populations of Madagascar (89%), Democratic Republic of Congo (87.2%) and Malawi (86%) experiencing greatest inadequacies in employment.
Illiteracy
The study estimates 12.6% of the world’s adult population, or 767 million people, were classified as illiterate in 2023, marking a decline from nearly 13% in 2019.
“Pope Francis chose education as one of his primary indicators of spiritual freedom because of its long-term benefits for society and the poor,” the report explains. “Education can enable the poor to make a more significant contribution to the common good of society. And it can also empower the poor to be ‘dignified agents of their own destiny.’”
Leading the world in illiteracy rates were Chad (72.7), Mali (69.0) and Burkina Faso (65.5%). Afghanistan (63%) was the only non-African nation in the top 10 in that category.
Women
More than half of all women around the world — 2 billion — live in countries where they suffer severe discrimination because of their gender, the report says. The figure is sharply higher than the 35% in 2014.
“In his 2015 address to the U.N., Pope Francis specifically stressed that girls should not be excluded from education. It is through exclusion and marginalization that many women continue to suffer in poverty today.”
Researchers used the World Economic Forum’s “Health and Survival Index” to determine that Azerbaijan, China and Vietnam lead all nations in terms of women’s inequality.
Religious freedom
China, Egypt, Afghanistan and Iran were the most repressive of religious freedoms in 2022, the report says. Worldwide, 4.7 billion people lived in countries where they faced religious repression.
That 59% share represents a slight increase over 2021 but continues a steady rise since the percentage of people with restricted religious freedom jumped from just over 40% in 2016 to more than 55% in 2017.
“Pope Francis specifies that religious freedom is also among the absolute minimum requirements necessary to live in dignity,” the report adds. “Religious freedom, similar to education and other civil rights such as gender equity, may be an important component in empowering the marginalized to be dignified agents of their own destiny.”