41.5 Crore Indian lifted out of Poverty says the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index report 2022

Tags: National Economy/Finance

According to the 4th Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) 2022 report, India has successfully lifted 41.5 crore people out of poverty between 2005-06 and 2019-20. The report is jointly brought out by the UNDP’s Human Development Report Office and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI).The first report was released in 2019 and it is released annually.

The report ranks 111 developing countries in the world on its Multidimensional Poverty index.  

Main Points of the report 

Poverty in the world 

• According to the report 1.2 billion people in the world are multidimensionally poor.
• The highest number of poor people are in Sub Saharan Africa (579 million), followed by South Asia (385 million). The two regions together are home to 83% of poor people.

India report 

Decline in Poverty over the years  

•  41.5 Crore people in the country were lifted out of multidimensional poverty between 2005-06 and 2019-20.
•  The data shows that roughly 27.5 crore people exited multidimensional poverty between 2005-6 and 2015-16, which works out to 2.75 crore people a year on an average.
•  Between 2015-16 and 2019-20, 14 crore people were lifted from multidimensional poverty, which works out to an average of 2.8 crore people a year.

World’s largest poor in India 

• India has the largest number of poor people worldwide (228.9 million), followed by Nigeria (96.7 million projected in 2020).”
• The Index has used 2020 population data of India for this purpose.
• In India “about 4.2 per cent of the population live in severe poverty (meaning their deprivation score is 50 per cent or higher).

Children are the poorest age group 

• Poverty is found more amongst the children as compared to the adults.  
• Children are still the poorest age group, with more than one in five (21.8 per cent) children being poor, compared to around one in seven adults (13.9 per cent). 
• There are around 9.7 crore poor children in India.

More poor in rural areas 

• The percentage of people who are poor is 21.2 per cent in rural areas compared with 5.5 per cent in urban areas
• Rural areas account for nearly 90 percent of poor people and  205 million of the nearly 229 million poor people live in rural areas

Poverty more in female headed households 

• About 19.7 percent of people living in female-headed households live in poverty compared with 15.9 per cent in male-headed households.

Performance of the States

• Only West Bengal was successful in coming out of the  list of 10 poorest state list prepared in  2015/16.
• The other 9 poorest states of India are Bihar, Jharkhand, Meghalaya, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan.
• Across states and union territories the fastest reduction of poverty in relative terms was in Goa, followed by Jammu and Kashmir, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan.

What is Multidimensional poverty Index? 

• Multidimensional poverty assessments aim to measure the non-income based dimensions of poverty, to provide a more comprehensive assessment of the extent of poverty and deprivation.
• The Index measures a person’s deprivation across three dimensions and 10 indicators:  health (child mortality, nutrition), education (years of schooling, enrollment), and living standards (water, sanitation, electricity, cooking fuel, and assets). 
• It first identifies which of these 10 deprivations each household experiences, then identifies households as poor if they suffer deprivations across one -third or more of the weighted indicators.

The Index reflects deprivations on the following indicators:

1. Adult(under 70 years) or child  being malnourished
2. Death of any Child (under age of 18 years) within the household in the  last 5 years
3. No household member aged above 6 years has completed at least six years of schooling 
4. Disrupted or curtailed schooling (a minimum of years 1-8)
5. Any child of the family who is not attending  school upto the age at which he/she would have  completed class eight study
6. Lack of access to safe drinking water
7. Lack of access to basic sanitation services
8. Lack of access to clean cooking fuel
9. Lack of basic modern assets (radio, TV, telephone, computer, bike, motorbike, etc.)
10. Lack of access to reliable electricity

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

It was set up by the United Nation General Assembly on 22 November 1965. 

It help the countries in developing their own solutions  on the issues of; 

•  Sustainable Development,
• Democratic governance and peace building,  and 
• Climate and Disaster resilience.  

Headquarters: New York City, United States 

Reports 

• It publishes a Human Development Report every year.
• It also publishes the Multidimensional Poverty Index with the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative. 
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