Poverty Halved in Under a Decade Here

The poorest segment of Cambodia’s population shrunk by half over the last eight years, a step in the right direction for the country’s projection to become an upper-middle-income country by 2030.

“The number of poor people was halved from 5.6 million to 2.8 million,” as stated in a report conducted by the United Nations Development Program. “One in five Cambodians moved out of poverty in just 7.5 years.”

From 2014 to 2022, the poverty rate in Cambodia went from 36.7% to 16.6% with a significant decrease in the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) in 17 of the 25 subnational regions, with the provinces of Preah Vihear and Stung Treng having the fastest reduction in their MPI and incidence of poverty, going from 64.3% to 34.6%. According to the World Bank, Cambodia’s national poverty line is 10,951 riel or 2.7$ per person per day. Prime Minister Hun Sen is “very confident that Cambodia will graduate from least developed country status by 2027 at the latest and will achieve [the] goal of becoming an upper-middle income country in 2030.”