BetterThe sentence sounds like a paradox, or a slogan. It is neither. It is a measurement, and three different international bodies take it in three different fields.
The mechanism is always the same: the service is identical, the price is not, or the price is identical and the access is not.
Health: 3 out of 4 people among the poorest face financial hardship from health costs, against fewer than 1 in 25 among the richest.
Money: sending remittances costs an average of 6.36% of the amount, for people sending small sums. The UN target is under 3%.
Food: a healthy diet costs 4.28 PPP dollars a day, and 2.69 billion people cannot reach it.
DefinitionWhat the sentence actually claims
It does not claim that poor people spend more in absolute terms. Obviously they spend less. It claims that for the same thing, they pay a higher priceor pay the same price and are shut out.
What we are not going to put numbers on. The everyday versions of this, prepayment energy meters, expensive credit, insurance priced by postcode, buying in small packs, are real and well documented, but country by country. We could not tie them to a dated international source, so we do not quote figures for them. What follows is only what is measured globally.
The widest gapHealth: nineteen times more likely
The World Health Organization tracks what it calls financial hardship caused by out-of-pocket health spending, the moment paying for care damages the rest of your life.
Set the two side by side and the ratio is roughly nineteen to one. Not the amount spent, the probability that a health cost wrecks the household.
At world scale, the WHO counts 2.1 billion people in financial hardship from health costs in 2022, of whom 1.6 billion were living in poverty or pushed deeper into it. It also notes that rural populations are hit about 14% more often than urban ones.
The purest caseMoney: 6.36% to move your own wages
This one is the cleanest demonstration, because the service is strictly identical whoever buys it: moving money from one country to another.
The World Bank runs a price observatory covering 367 corridors, from 48 sending countries to 105 receiving countries, and it is explicit that it tracks relatively small amountsthat is, the sums a worker sends to their family.
“Globally, sending remittances costs an average of 6.36 percent of the amount sent.” That is the World Bank's own wording, from data updated on 18 August 2025.
And the United Nations has a target for it, Sustainable Development Goal 10.c: “By 2030, reduce to less than 3 per cent the transaction costs of migrant remittances and eliminate remittance corridors with costs higher than 5 per cent.”
A target of under 3% is an official statement that 6.36% is too high.
Nobody with a large account and a bank branch pays that rate to move money. The premium is not hidden in the fine print: it is the headline number, and an international target exists precisely because it has not come down on its own.
The third formFood: when the price holds and access does not
The premium does not always show up as a higher price. Sometimes the price stays put and the thing simply moves out of reach. The FAO measures exactly that.
It costs what it costs, the average minimum spend needed to eat locally available food that covers energy and most nutrient needs:
Two directions at once, and both are true. The number of people who cannot afford a healthy diet has fallen, from 2.97 billion in 2021 to 2.69 billion in 2025. And the cost of that diet has risen over the same period. Progress on one axis does not cancel pressure on the other, and reporting only the encouraging half would be the easy lie here.
What followsWhat this changes for anyone who wants to help
The point of measuring this is not to be grim. It is that the premium tells you where an effort lands.
- The same euro is worth more further down. Where 3 out of 4 households are wrecked by a health bill rather than 1 in 25, the same amount of help prevents nineteen times more damage.
- A fee is not a detail. On 6.36%, cutting the price by at least five points saves, the World Bank's own figure, up to 16 billion dollars a year, without a single donation.
- “They just manage badly” does not survive the numbers. None of these three gaps is a spending decision. They are prices and access conditions, set elsewhere, by someone else.
That last one is the reason this article exists. The premium is not a consequence of poverty. It is one of the things that keeps it in place.
QuestionsFrequently asked questions
What is the “poverty premium”?
The idea that for the same service, a poor person pays more, or is refused access. It is not an impression: three international bodies each measure it in their own field. The WHO on health costs, the World Bank on money transfers, the FAO on the cost of a healthy diet. All three point the same way.
How big is the gap on health costs?
It is roughly nineteenfold. In 2022, the WHO reports that 3 out of 4 people among the poorest faced financial hardship from health costs, compared with fewer than 1 in 25 among the richest. In total, 2.1 billion people faced that hardship, including 1.6 billion living in poverty or pushed deeper into it.
How much does it cost to send money home?
On average 6.36% of the amount sent, according to the World Bank, which tracks 367 corridors between 48 sending countries and 105 receiving countries. It is an ordinary financial service, billed to people sending small amounts. The UN has set a target of falling below 3% by 2030, in other words, it officially considers the current price too high.
Does a healthy diet cost more for poor people?
The price is the same, it is access that is not, and that is the third form of the premium. The FAO puts the global average cost of a healthy diet at 4.28 purchasing power parity dollars per person per day in 2025. At that price, 2.69 billion people, or 32.7% of humanity, cannot afford it. In Africa, it is 66.6%.
Is it getting better?
In places, yes, and that deserves saying. The share of the world population facing financial hardship from health costs fell from 34% in 2000 to 26% in 2022. The number of people unable to afford a healthy diet fell from 2.97 billion in 2021 to 2.69 billion in 2025. But the cost of that diet went up, from 2.94 dollars in 2017 to 4.28 in 2025.
What about everyday premiums, credit, insurance, energy?
They are real and well documented, but country by country, in national work we could not tie to a dated international source. So we do not put figures on them here. What is measured globally is the three gaps in this article, and they are enough to establish the mechanism.
Read nextRelated
Sources
- Universal health coverage, World Health Organization, 5 December 2025
- Remittance Prices Worldwide, World Bank, updated 18 August 2025
- Sustainable Development Goal 10, target 10.c, United Nations
- The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, 2026 edition, FAO
About this article. General and educational information, accurate as of the date shown. The figures quoted are global averages published by international organisations: they describe an overall trend, not the situation of any one country or person. Reference years differ from one source to the next and are stated each time.
Spotted an error or an out-of-date figure? Write to us: we will correct it and re-date the article. Our texts are written with the help of artificial intelligence and checked against official sources before publication, but a figure or a definition can change without us catching it. If anything here does not match what an official body tells you, they are right.