Extreme Poverty decreased by 12% in the Last Decade in India

According to a recent World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, Extreme poverty in India is estimated to have decreased by 12.3 percentage points between 2011 to 2019.  The Research Paper has been titled ‘Poverty has declined over the last decade But Not As Much As Previously Thought.’ It states that the extreme poverty count declined from 22.5% in 2011 to 10.2% in the year 2019. Interestingly the World Bank defines ‘living in extreme poverty’ in India as living on $1.9 or less in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) terms.

Additionally,  according to a joint report by economists, Sutirtha Sinha Roy and Roy van der Weide informed that the decline in extreme poverty was much more prominent in the rural areas than compared to urban areas. It states that the reduction in rural poverty is more significant with a 14.7% point drop, whereas urban poverty witnessed a 7.9% point decline. It further emphasizes that extreme poverty decreased t0 19.1% in the first half of the decade. The remaining 9.1% drop was accomplished in the later years, between the year 2015 and the year 2019. The fastest decline rate in poverty was 3.2% point which was achieved between 2017 and 2018.