Around 415 million people in India climbed out of poverty between 2005-06 and 2019-21, with the incidence of poverty falling from 55 per cent to just over 16 per cent over this period, according to the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index 2022.
Despite the significant reductions, however, the largest number of poor people in the world — 228.9 million — lived in India in 2020, said the MPI report, released Monday by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) at the University of Oxford. India’s MPI value and incidence of poverty were both more than halved. The MPI value fell from 0.283 in 2005-2006 to 0.122 in 2015-2016 to 0.069 in 2019-2021. The incidence of poverty fell from 55.1 per cent in 2005-2006 to 27.7 per cent in 2015-2016 to 16.4 per cent in 2015-2016.
The data do not, however, reflect post-pandemic changes. The Covid-19 pandemic could set back the progress made in poverty reduction globally by 3-10 years, the report said, adding that the most recent data on food security from the World Food Programme suggest that the number of people living in food crises or worse increased to 193 million in 2021.
“Despite progress, India’s population remains vulnerable to the mounting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and to rising food and energy prices. Integrated policies tackling the ongoing nutritional and energy crises should be a priority,” it said.
The incidence of poverty fell from 36.6 per cent in 2015-2016 to 21.2 per cent in 2019-2021 in rural areas and from 9.0 per cent to 5.5 per cent in urban areas, said the MPI report.
The drop in poverty demonstrates that the “Sustainable Development Goal target 1.2 of reducing at least by half the proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions by 2030 is possible to achieve—and at scale,” said the report.
The report said that the poorest states in the country reduced poverty the fastest and deprivations in all indicators fell significantly among poor people. Poverty among children fell faster in absolute terms, although India still has the highest number of poor children in the world. More than one in five children in India are poor (21.8 per cent, or 97 million) compared with around one in seven adults (13.9 per cent).
The Global Multidimensional Poverty Index is a key international resource that measures acute multidimensional poverty across more than 100 developing countries and was first launched in 2010 by the OPHI and the Human Development Report Office of the UNDP.
The MPI monitors deprivations in 10 indicators spanning health, education and standard of living and includes both incidence as well as intensity of poverty.
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