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World Bank puts India's extreme poverty rate at 2.6%
The Hindu BusinessLine·
The World Bank said India's extreme poverty rate at $3 per day fell to 2.6 percent in its October 2026 brief. Extreme poverty declined from 27.1 percent between 2011 and 2023. Median earnings for the top 10 percent of workers were about 13 times those of the bottom 10 percent in 2023, the brief said.
Prism
What It Means For You
- The $3 per day line equals roughly Rs 285 in purchasing power terms used in the brief.
- Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman linked the poverty drop to sustained policy efforts in her statement.
- Projections show the $4.20 per day poverty rate easing from 14.2 percent in 2026 to 12.1 percent by 2028.
What's Happening
- The brief said India recorded one of the fastest monetary poverty declines globally over the past decade.
- Non-monetary poverty on the World Bank MPI measure stood at 15.5 percent in 2022-23.
- The report tied gains to consumption growth, employment including among women, and food subsidies.
Poverty Line Definitions
- Extreme poverty uses a $3.00 per day threshold in 2021 purchasing power parity.
- The lower middle income line uses $4.20 per day in the same PPP basis.
- Wage gaps persisted even as headcount poverty fell across rural and urban households.
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