Extreme poverty in India fell sharply in 2011-19: World Bank paper

Rural decline steeper than in urban centres

Extreme poverty in India declined by 12.3 percentage points to 10.2 per cent in 2019, from 22.5 per cent in 2011, according to a working paper of the World Bank.

The paper, authored by economists Sutirtha Sinha Roy and Roy van der Weide, showed the reduction in abject poverty in rural areas was more pronounced during the period review than in urban areas. The paper showed that rural extreme poverty dropped by 14.7 percentage points during this period, while urban deep poverty fell by 7.9 percentage points.

In between, however, both urban and rural India witnessed a rise in extreme