Around 415 million people in India have been lifted out of poverty in the span of last 15 years, stated the UNDP’s Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI). The United Nations Development Programme called the reduction in poverty “remarkable” underlining that India is on the path to achieving sustainable development goals.
The report stated, “The reduction in Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) value in India was swift across the two most recent periods. MPI estimates based on the recently released 2019/2021 Demographic and Health Survey for the country show that 415 million people exited poverty between 2005/2006 and 2019/2021 — including about 140 million since 2015/2016 — and that the country’s MPI value and incidence of poverty were both more than halved.”
The 2022 report titled “Unpacking deprivation bundle to reduce multidimensional poverty” is backed by a statistical report released recently titled “Unstacking global poverty: Data for high impact action”.
According to the 2023 data, poverty in India fell from 55.1% to 16.4% and deprivation across all poverty indicators declined. Additionally, the poorest states and groups, including children and people in disadvantaged caste groups, had the fastest absolute progress.
Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Jharkhand, as per the report, which were initially among the poorest in the country, reduced poverty faster in absolute terms than the national average thereby narrowing the poverty gap.
Rural areas were the poorest and saw the fastest reduction in MPI value. The prevalence of poverty fell from 36.6 percent in 2015/2016 to 21.2 percent in 2019/2021 in rural areas and from 9.0 percent to 5.5 percent in urban areas.
Children, the poorest age group, saw the fastest reduction in MPI value. Poverty fell from 34.7 percent to 21.8 percent among children and from 24.0 percent to 13.9 percent among adults. Similarly, the poorest caste and religious groups saw the fastest absolute reduction in the recent period.
Notably, sustainable development goal target 1.2 is to reduce at least by half the proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions. The UNDP report says that India’s progress shows that this goal is feasible even on a large scale.
Deprivations in sanitation, cooking fuel and housing fell the most from 2015/2016 to 2019/2021. The share of the population who were poor and deprived of sanitation dropped from 24.4 percent in 2015/2016 to 11.3 percent in 2019/2021. The share of the population who were poor and cooked primarily with wood, dung, charcoal or another solid fuel was nearly halved — from 26.0 percent in 2015/2016 to 13.9 percent in 2019/2021 — accompanied by a large reduction in the share of the population who were poor and deprived in electricity — from 8.6 percent to 2.1 percent.