India’s extreme-poverty rate fell from 27.1% to 2.6% between 2011 and 2023 at the World Bank’s $3-a-day threshold, according to figures reported by Priyanka Shankar for Al Jazeera and in a Bloomberg-accredited report published by News24.
A separate estimate concerns the higher, $4.20-a-day poverty line. The share of India’s population below that threshold fell from 57.7% to 16.1% over the same period, with an estimated 496 million people rising above it, the two reports say. The 496 million figure is not a count of people leaving $3-a-day extreme poverty.
World Bank economists led by Ayago Wambile attributed the progress mainly to stronger consumption, rising employment, particularly among women, and expanded social transfers, including food subsidies, according to Al Jazeera and News24.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi used a different description of a similar-sized figure. Citing a recent World Bank report, he said around 50 crore people, or roughly 500 million, had overcome “extreme poverty” in the past 10 to 12 years, PTI reported in The Economic Times. The reported 496 million estimate applies to the $4.20 line.
The poverty decline has not erased economic disparities. Al Jazeera reports that income and wealth inequality has widened significantly since India opened its economy in the early 1990s. News24 reports that median earnings among the top 10% of workers were about 13 times those of the bottom 10% in 2023.
