Poverty in India declined 12.3 percentage points between 2011-2019: World Bank
The World Bank’s finding comes close on the heels of a working paper published by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) saying India has almost eradicated extreme poverty.
NEW DELHI: Extreme poverty in India is 12.3 percentage points lower in 2019 than in 2011 as poverty headcount rate has declined from 22.5% in 2011 to 10.2% in 2019 with comparatively sharper decline in rural areas, a working paper of the World Bank policy research said.
The findings came close on the heels of a working paper published by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) saying India has almost eradicated extreme poverty and brought down consumption inequality to its lowest levels in 40 years through state-provided food handouts.
Poverty reduction was higher in rural areas compared to 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% during the corresponding period, it said.
“Rural and urban poverty dropped by 14.7 and 7.9 percentage points during 2011-2019,” said the World Bank’s working paper, ‘Poverty in India Has Declined over the Last Decade But Not As Much As Previously Thought’.
The paper is jointly authored by economists Sutirtha Sinha Roy and Roy van der Weide. The World Bank policy research working papers aim to encourage exchange of ideas on development and quickly disseminates the findings of research in progress.
According to the study, farmers with small landholding sizes have experienced higher income growth. “Real incomes for farmers with the smallest landholdings have grown by 10 percent in annualized terms between the two survey rounds [2013 and 2019] compared to a 2 percent growth for farmers with the largest landholding,” it said.
The World Bank’s paper is significant as India has no official estimation of recent periods. The last expenditure survey was released in 2011 by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO), when the country had also released official estimates of poverty and inequality.
“This paper sheds light on how poverty and inequality have evolved since 2011 using a new household panel survey, the Consumer Pyramids Household Survey conducted by a private data company,” the authors said. In view of the data quality issues, in November 2019, the ministry of statistics and programme implementation (MOSPI) had decided to hold the release of the consumer expenditure survey results of 2017-2018.
According to the World Bank’s research paper, urban poverty in India rose by 2 percentage point in 2016 coinciding with the demonetisation, and rural poverty rose by 10 basis points in 2019, coinciding with a slowdown in the economy. “We detect two incidences of rising poverty in our period of analysis: urban poverty rose by 2 percentage points in 2016 during the demonetisation event and fell sharply thereafter; and, rural poverty rose by 10 basis points in 2019 likely due to a growth slowdown,” the paper said.
The paper also talked about consumption inequality. “We observe a slight moderation in consumption inequality since 2011, but by a margin smaller than what is reported in the unreleased NSS-2017 survey. Finally, the extent of poverty reduction during 2015-2019 is estimated to be notably lower than earlier projections based on growth in private final consumption expenditure reported in national account statistics,” the authors said.
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