A World Bank report has revealed that world’s one-third poor live in India on less than $ 1.25 (Rs 65 INR) per day.
New Delhi, April 18/Nationalturk – In what cannot be a good news for Indian government, a World Bank report has said that world’s one-third poor live in India on less than $ 1.25 (Rs 65 INR) per day.
A new analysis of extreme poverty released by the World Bank in Washington yesterday shows that there are 1.2 billion people living in extreme poverty. “Despite recent impressive progress, Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for more than one-third of the world’s extreme poor. India also accounts for one-third of world’s poor”.
World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim said, “We have made remarkable progress in reducing the number of people living under $1.25 a day in the developing world, but the fact that there are still 1.2 billion people in extreme poverty is a stain on our collective conscience”.
The World Bank report, “The State of the Poor: Where are the Poor and Where are the Poorest,” using data released in the latest World Development Indicators, shows that extreme poverty headcount rates have fallen in every developing region between 1981 and 2010 from half the citizens in the developing world to 21%.
“Both Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) seem to have turned a corner entering the new millennium. After steadily increasing from 51 percent in 1981 to 58 percent in 1999, the extreme poverty rate fell 10 percentage points in SSA between 1999 and 2010 and is now at 48 percent—an impressive 17 percent decline in one decade. In LAC, after remaining stable at approximately 12 percent for the last two decades of the 20th century, extreme poverty was cut in half between 1999 and 2010 and is now at 6 percent,” the report said.
Poverty has steadily risen in Sub Saharan Africa
The report said despite falling poverty rates, Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region in the world for which the number of poor individuals has risen steadily and dramatically between 1981 and 2010. “There are more than twice as many extremely poor people living in SSA today (414 million) than there were three decades ago (205 million). As a result, while the extreme poor in SSA represented only 11 percent of the world’s total in 1981, they now account for more than a third of the world’s extreme poor”.
“India contributes another third (up from 22 percent in 1981) and China comes next, contributing 13 percent (down from 43 percent in 1981),” it further said.
The report noted that the average income of the extremely poor in the developing world has been rising and steadily converging to the $1.25 per day poverty line. In 2010, the average income of the extremely poor in the developing world was 87 cents per capita per day, up from 74 cents in 1981 (in 2005 Purchasing Power Parity dollars).
“We have made strides in cutting down poverty, but with nearly one-fifth of the world population still below the poverty line, not enough,” said Kaushik Basu, World Bank Senior Vice President and chief economist.
He said directing investment towards the poor will require coordinated effort by the Bank, our country partners, and the international development community.
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Faiz Ahmad / NationalTurk India News
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