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Over 270 million people in India moved out of poverty in the decade since 2005-06 and the poverty rate in the country nearly halved over the 10-year period, a promising sign that poverty is being tackled globally, according to latest estimates released on Thursday.
The 2018 global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) released here by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) said that about 1.3 billion people live in multidimensional poverty globally.
This is almost a quarter of the population of the 104 countries for which the 2018 MPI is calculated. Of these 1.3 billion, almost half — 46 per cent — are thought to be living in severe poverty and are deprived in at least half of the dimensions covered in the MPI, it said.
While there is much that needs to be done to tackle poverty globally, there are “promising signs that such poverty can be — and is being — tackled.”
New perspective
The Index noted that in India, 271 million people moved out of poverty between 2005/06 and 2015/16. The poverty rate in the country has nearly halved, falling from 55 per cent to 28 per cent over the ten-year period.
India is the first country for which progress over time has been estimated.
“Although the level of poverty — particularly in children — is staggering so is the progress that can be made in tackling it. In India alone some 271 million have escaped multidimensional poverty in just ten years,” UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner said.
“The Multidimensional Poverty Index gives insights that are vital for understanding the many ways in which people experience poverty, and it provides a new perspective on the scale and nature of global poverty,” he said.
Although similar comparisons over time have not yet been calculated for other countries, the latest information from UNDP’s Human Development Index shows significant development progress in all regions, including many Sub-Saharan African countries.
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