Hard to count the poor, but poverty in India is falling

What is the news?

According to last year data on the Tendulkar committee recommended poverty line, India’s poverty has reduced by 7.9 percentage points between 2009-10 and 2011-12.

About the brief history of India’s poverty line

What are the issues associated with the poverty line?

Generally, poverty indicators are linked to the general level of food intake such as malnutrition, wasting. But they don’t reflect the estimated reduction with poverty lines. For example, The proportion of stunted children is higher than the proportion of poor in the country. So the poverty lines are there under counting the poor or people fall into poverty due to spike in expenses and income loss.

Poverty measures based on income alone ignores other factors like education and health that keep a person trapped in a poverty.

About the multidimensional poverty

Multidimensional poverty approach factors in health education and general quality of life. But the people under multidimensional poverty will be higher than normal poverty estimation.

India’s multidimensional poverty reduced from 53.7% of the population in 2011 to 27.9 % of the population in 2018. But this is higher than poverty levels based on income poverty.

Read more: About Multidimensional Poverty Index

Source: This post is based on the article “Hard to count the poor, but poverty in India is falling” published in TOI on 25th November 2021.