‘Over 270m in India moved out of poverty in 10 years’

UNITED NATIONS: 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 released here by the United Nations Development Programme and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative noted that in India, 271 million moved out of poverty between 2005/06 and 2015/16.The country’s poverty rate has nearly halved, falling from 55%to 28% over the 10-year period.
India is the first country for which progress over time has been estimated. “Although the level of poverty is staggering, so is the progress that can be made in tackling it” UNDP administrator Achim Steiner said. PTI
1.3bn live in poverty globally, says report
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% — 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”.
“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 while reminding us that eliminating it in all its forms is far
from impossible,” UNDP administrator Achim Steiner 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.
Between 2006 and 2017, life expectancy increased over seven years in sub-Saharan Africa and by almost four years in South Asia, and enrolment rates in primary education are up to 100%.
This bodes well for improvements in multidimensional poverty.
The new figures show that in 104 primarily low- and middle-income countries, 662 million children are considered multidimensionally poor. In 35 countries, half of all children are poor. The MPI looks beyond income to understand how people experience poverty in multiple and simultaneous ways.
It identifies how people are being left behind across three key dimensions: health, education and living standards, lacking such things as clean water, sanitation, adequate nutrition or primary education. Those who are deprived in at least a third of the MPI’s components are defined as multidimensionally poor.