The bottom of the pyramid, bottom of the wealth pyramid, bottom of the income pyramid or the base of the pyramid is the largest, but poorest socio-economic group. In global terms, this is the 2.7 billion people who live on less than $2.50 a day.[1][2]
Management scholar CK Prahalad popularised the idea of this demographic as a profitable consumer base in his 2004 book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, written alongside Stuart Hart.[3]
Technically, a member of the BOP is part of the largest but poorest groups of the world's population, who live with less than $2.50 a day and are excluded from the modernity of our globalised civilised societies, including consumption and choice as well as access to organised financial services.
Globally, 1.2 billion people (22 percent) live on less than $1.25 a day. Increasing the income poverty line to $2.50 a day raises the global income poverty rate to about 50 percent, or 2.7 billion people.
C. K. Prahalad, a management professor and author who popularized the idea that companies could make money while helping to alleviate poverty, died Friday in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego.