How is this meaningful?

It is meaningful.

I agree, a huge drop in people making less than $5 a day, does not equal a huge drop in people with guaranteed access to medicine food, etc.

However, it does mean that a ton of people now have at least 5 more dollars. Not a life changing amount, but it is an incremental improvement.

And realistically, that’s how we’re going to complex social problems like global poverty. With incremental improvements.

Note that the graph doesn’t say which policies are causing the drop. Only that a drop is happening. It is possible (in fact likely) that some policies are making things worse (IMF restructuring prioritizing private creditors over local people) and other policies are making things better (PEPFAR)

The graph also shows that while the current mix of policies correlates with huge drops in extreme poverty, it has barely made a dent in regular poverty (< $30/day). This shows that if our goal is to get rid of all poverty, the current policy mix is not doing that.

Just because you can’t derive any use from the graph, doesn’t mean it’s useless.

funded by the Gates & Melinda Foundation

This is an ad hominem attack. If you want to argue that the data is wrong. Do that, don’t vaguely wave towards the evil boogeyman.