World Bank: About 496 million Indians moved out of poverty between 2011 and 2023

India's poverty declined faster over the past decade than anywhere else in the world, according to a World Bank report. The report says an estimated 49.6 crore (496 million) people moved out of poverty between 2011 and 2023.

The report gives figures on two benchmarks. The lower-middle-income line is set at $4.2 a day (2021 PPP). The share of the population living below this line fell from 57.7 per cent in 2011 to 16.1 per cent in 2023. The share living in extreme poverty, below $3.00 a day, fell from 27.1 per cent to 2.6 per cent over the same period.

The World Bank attributed the decline to three factors: a strong rise in consumption, growth in employment, especially among women, and a wider reach of social transfers, including food subsidies.

Looking ahead, the report expects poverty to keep falling, though at a slower pace. The World Bank expects the share of the population below the $4.20-a-day line to fall from 14.2 per cent in 2026 to 12.1 per cent by 2028. This is a projection, not an outcome.

The report also says that as poverty falls, it is increasingly concentrated in households with less education, fewer assets, fewer job opportunities and more dependents. Wage inequality is also considerable. According to the World Bank, in 2023 the average earnings of the top 10 per cent of workers would be about 13 times those of the bottom 10 per cent.

On employment, the report says that between 2017 and 2023, employment rose by an estimated 134 million people. This is nearly double the pace at which the working-age population grew. Much of the increase came from rural women taking up paid work, which raised the number of earners in each household.