Despite popular belief, the world became a more equal place in the years after the global financial crisis, with twice as many countries seeing declines in inequality as increases, according to the World Bank.

In a new study released on Sunday, the bank also found that fewer people were living in extreme poverty, or on less than $1.90 per day. In 2013, 767m, or just over one in ten of the world’s population, were struggling to survive below the line, down from 881m the year before.

Inequality and its economic consequences have drawn an increasing focus in recent years and are widely believed to have contributed to the rise of populist politicians like Donald Trump.

The consensus has been that the growth over the past 30 years of emerging economies such as Brazil, China and India has led to the biggest decrease in inequality between countries since the Industrial Revolution. That progress, however, is thought to have come at the cost of an increase in inequality within countries, particularly in the industrialised world, as competition with new powers like China has hurt workers while the wealthy have benefited from the rising value of financial assets.

Between 2008 and 2013, the number of countries experiencing declining inequality was twice the number exhibiting widening inequality

But the new study by World Bank researchers found that inequality within countries actually decreased since the 2008 crisis, with major industrialised economies among the beneficiaries.

“Between 2008 and 2013, the number of countries experiencing declining inequality was twice the number exhibiting widening inequality,” the authors wrote.

Francisco Ferreira, who oversees the World Bank’s poverty research, said the findings were “myth-breaking”.

“Whereas the attention in the world at large has been focused [on rising inequality] there has been this kind of quieter process of inequality reduction [which] has not been looked at,” he said.

According to World Bank data shared with the Financial Times, the UK was the industrialised economy that saw the biggest decline in inequality after the crisis. Others include the US, Germany, Brazil and China.

The most unequal countries in the world were South Africa and Haiti. In South Africa, the report found, the income share of the top 1 per cent of earners had roughly doubled over the past 20 years to a level comparable to the United States.

Globally, the world’s poor continue to be concentrated in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa with almost 650m of the 766m people surviving on $1.90 or less a day living in those regions in 2013, according to the World Bank.

Of the more than 100m people climbing out of poverty between 2012 and 2013, 71m came from east Asia, mainly China and Indonesia, although 30m of that number was attributed to methodological changes in China.

Just 4m people in sub-Saharan Africa rose above the $1.90 per day line between 2012 and 2013, with 41 per cent of the continent’s population still living in extreme poverty.