Extreme poverty in India, defined at $2.15 a day, stood at 129 million in 2024, down from 431 million in 1990, the World Bank said in its latest report. However, with a higher poverty standard of $6.85 per day—the threshold for middle-income countries—the report noted that there are more people living below the poverty line in 2024 in India than in 1990, primarily driven by population growth.
Earlier, the World Bank had said that extreme poverty in India declined by 38 million in 2021 to 167.49 million, following a surge in the two preceding years.
The latest report, titled Poverty, Prosperity and Planet: Pathways out of the Polycrisis, released on Tuesday, clarified that these new data sets have not factored in the Household Consumption and Expenditure Survey (HCES) for 2022-23 released recently. “These new data sets are not reflected in the report, since the necessary analysis could not be completed in time. While the precise impact of adding these two data sets on global poverty is unclear at the time of this writing, key conclusions of the report are robust, such as the increasing concentration of extreme poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa and fragile countries, and that extreme poverty eradication by 2030 is out of reach,” it added.
The report notes that global poverty reduction has slowed to a near standstill, with 2020–30 set to be a lost decade. At the current pace of progress, the report observes that it would take decades to eradicate extreme poverty and more than a century to lift people above $6.85 per day.
The World Bank said India’s contribution to global extreme poverty is projected to decline significantly over the next decade. “These estimates are based on projections of growth in gross domestic product (GDP) per capita over the next decade, as well as historic growth rates. Even setting the extreme poverty rate in India in 2030 to zero, the global extreme poverty rate in 2030 would only fall from 7.31 per cent to 6.72 per cent, still well above the 3 per cent target,” it added.
The report said the impact of the recent methodological changes in the latest HCES also need to be examined carefully. Since 1999-2000, India has been experimenting with various recall periods to improve the accuracy of consumption data collection. In the 2011-12 survey, India utilised three recall periods: the Uniform Recall Period (URP), Mixed Reference Period (MRP), and Modified Mixed Reference Period (MMRP). In 2011-12, MRP was adopted for official poverty rate calculations, and it was indicated that future data collection would transition to using MMRP. For the 2022-23 survey, India used exclusively the MMRP recall period for collecting consumption data.
First Published: Oct 15 2024 | 8:54 PM IST
