Global Hunger Index: Extreme Poverty in India declined 12.3% between 2011-19: World Bank

As per the reports of the new World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, extreme poverty in India fell 12.3 percent annually between 2011 and 2019.

The article, headlined ‘Poverty Has Decreased Over the Last Decade, Although Not As Much As Initially Believed,’ stated that the number of people living in extreme poverty has decreased from 22.5 percent in 2011 to 10.2 percent in 2019.

In India, severe poverty is defined as surviving on $1.9 or below in purchasing power parity (PPP) figures, according to the World Bank.

According to the paper co-authored by economic experts Sutirtha Sinha Roy and Roy van der Weide, the drop in rural areas was significantly greater than in major cities. It further states that the decrease in rural deprivation is more apparent, with a 14.7 percent point loss, compared to a 7.9 percent point margin in urban poverty.

The research article stated that extreme poverty fell to 19.1% during the first part of the decade. The remaining 9.1 percent was attained in the years following 2015, throughout 2015 and 2019. Between 2017 and 2018, extreme poverty fell by 3.2 percentage points, the quickest pace in over two decades.

Reports of IMF

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced just last week that India had nearly banished extreme poverty and reduced inequality to its bottom level in four decades. Government food distributions were used to address existing utilisation disparities. Only about 1% of the Indian population lives in extreme poverty. The study determined that food rationing was “critical” in ensuring that extreme deprivation did not worsen and remained consistent during the pandemic, as per the reports of IMF.

The goal of these research papers

Sutirtha Sinha Roy and Roy van der Weide, both intellectuals, co-authored the paper. The goal of the World Bank policy analysis research papers is to stimulate the flow of information on improvement and to promptly distribute the results of ongoing research.