Kathmandu. India’s population living under extreme poverty has dropped by nearly 14 per cent over the past decade, according to the World Bank. According to the World Bank, india’s population living on less than $2.15 per day in 2011-12 was 16.2 per cent, which has come down to 2.3 per cent in 2022-23. With this progress, 171 million people in India have risen above the extreme poverty line, according to a World Bank report.
According to the World Bank’s Brief Report on Poverty and Equality released this week, rural extreme poverty fell from 18.4 percent to 2.8 percent and urban poverty from 10.7 percent to 1.1 percent, narrowing the rural-urban gap from 7.7 percentage points to 1.7 percentage points.
Meanwhile, India has also been transformed into a lower-middle-income group. Using the low-middle-income poverty line of $3.65 a day, poverty has dropped from 61.8 per cent to 28.1 per cent, lifting 378 million Indians out of poverty.
Rural poverty has declined from 69 per cent to 32.5 per cent and urban poverty from 43.5 per cent to 17.2 per cent, reducing the rural-urban gap by 25 to 15 percentage points, down 7 per cent year-on-year.
The five most populous states – Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh – accounted for 65 per cent of the country’s poorest in 2011-12 and contributed two-thirds of the overall decline in extreme poverty by 2022-23. Yet, these states still account for 54 per cent of India’s poorest (2022-23) and 51 per cent of the multi-dimensional poor (2019-21).
In April 2023, India’s population crossed 1.42 billion. This population is more than that of China, the world’s most populous country. The United Nations estimates that India’s population will exceed 1.7 billion by 2060. China’s population growth rate has been steadily declining as China begins to control increasing population.
As measured by the Multidimensional Poverty Index, India’s non-monetary poverty declined from 53.8 per cent in 2005-06 to 16.4 per cent by 2019-21. The World Bank’s Multidimensional Poverty Measure is 15.5 per cent in 2022-23.
