Extreme poverty dipped in India: World Bank report

What is the News?

The World Bank has published the paper titled ‘Poverty has Declined over the Last Decade But Not As Much As Previously Thought’.

What are the key findings of the report?

Decline in Extreme Poverty: Extreme poverty in India declined by 12.3 percentage points between 2011 and 2019. It decreased from 22.5% in 2011 to 10.2% in 2019.

Note: The World Bank defines “extreme poverty” as living on less than USD 1.90 per person per day.

Urban and Rural Poverty: Poverty reduction was higher in rural areas compared with urban India as rural poverty declined from 26.3% in 2011 to 11.6% in 2019, while in urban areas the decline was from 14.2% to 6.3% in the corresponding period.

Two instances of Rising Poverty: One was in 2019 when the rural poverty rose by 10 basis points likely due to a growth slowdown and the other was during 2016 when urban poverty rose by 2 percentage points during the demonetisation event and fell sharply thereafter.

Smallholder farmers have experienced higher income growth: Real incomes for farmers with the smallest landholdings have grown by 10% in annualized terms between the two survey rounds (2013 and 2019) compared to a 2% growth for farmers with the largest landholding.

Wages in India: The casual wages in India grew at an annual rate of 4.1% between 2011 and 2017 as poverty fell by 1.5% points over the period. However, in 2018-2019, casual wage growth turned negative. The poverty reduction rate slowed down to (-) 0.8% points during this time.

Source: This post is based on the article “Extreme poverty dipped in India: World Bank report” published in Hindustan Times on 18th April 2022.