India is home to one-third of all poor people in the world: World Bank
27/8/2008 17:11
India is home to roughly one- third of all poor people in the world and
has a higher proportion of its population living on less than US$2 per day,
according to the World Bank's latest estimates on global poverty.
The
estimates also shows that the rate of decline of poverty in India was faster
between 1981 and 1990 than between 1990 and 2005, the Times of India today
quoted the bank as saying.
This is likely to give fresh ammunition to those
who maintain that economic reforms, which started in 1991, have failed to reduce
poverty at a faster rate.
India, according to the estimates, had 456 million
people or about 42 percent of the population living below the new international
poverty line of US$1.25 per day. The number of Indian poor also constitute 33
percent of the global poor, which is pegged at 1.4 billion people.
India also
had 828 million people, or 75.6 percent of the population living below US$2 a
day. Sub-Saharan Africa, considered the world's poorest region, is better -- it
has 72.2 percent of its population (551 million) live below the US$2 a day
level.
While the full report has not yet been released, a briefing note sent
by the Bank had some of the data and showed that the poverty rate -- those below
US$1.25
per day -- for India had come down from 59.8 percent in 1981 to 51.3
percent by 1990 or 8.5 percentage points over nine years.
Between 1990 and
2005, it declined to 41.6 percent, a drop of 9. 7 percentage points over 15
years, clearly a much slower rate of decline.
Xinhua
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