Madagascar is one of the poorest countries in the world with respect to both the
breadth and depth of poverty. Close to 80 percent of Madagascar’s population of over 22 million
people live on less than US$1.25 per day. A stunningly high proportion of close to 60 percent of
the population is estimated to be extremely poor based on the minimum food intake methodology.
This means that close to 13 million Malagasy people earn or live on resources that fall below the
cost of about 2,100 calories a day.1
Two-thirds of the people living in rural areas are extreme poor,
a proportion that, as Figure 1 shows, has barely changed over the last 10 years. Close to 80 percent
of Madagascar’s population lives in rural areas, and poverty in rural areas is nearly twice as high
as in urban areas. As a result, 86 percent of the poor live in rural areas.
Figure 1: Evolution of Absolute and Extreme Poverty by Location, 2001, 2005, and 2010