According to the latest update of global Multidimensional Poverty Index, as many as 415 million people in India were lifted out of poverty from 2005-06 to 2019-21.
Key points
- This would be a substantial fraction of our population, now estimated at over 1.4 billion. Also, India is among the 25 countries that managed to halve their multidimensional poverty.
- About 55 percent of India was living under ‘multidimensional poverty’ by 2005-06. This halved to 27.7 percent by 2015-16, and reduced further to 16.4 percent by 2019-21.
- Further, those who are poor and deprived of cooking fuel fell from 52.9% to 13.9%, and those short of proper sanitation from 50.4% to 11.3%. Some of these gains may have the current government’s social development schemes to thank.
About global Multidimensional Poverty Index
- The global Multidimensional Poverty Index was released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) at the University of Oxford.
- MPI measures poverty by taking into account more factors such as health, education and living standards, which are further broken down into 10 sub-indicators.
- It takes into account demographics and health surveys, multiple indicator surveys, and national surveys that these countries release periodically.
- According to the 2023 release, 1.1 billion out of 6.1 billion people (just over 18%) live in acute multidimensional poverty across 110 countries.
- Sub-Saharan Africa (534 million) and South Asia (389 million) are home to approximately five out of every six poor people. Children under 18 years old account for half of MPI-poor people (566 million).
