NEW DELHI — India’s extreme poverty rate fell from 27.1% in 2011 to 2.6% in 2023, according to a new World Bank report, Al Jazeera reported on Nov. 3.
About 496 million people were lifted out of poverty over the period, Al Jazeera reported. The World Bank defines extreme poverty as living on less than $3 a day.
Key facts
- At the $4.20-a-day line, the poverty rate fell from 57.7% to 16.1% between 2011 and 2023, Al Jazeera reported.
- The rate at that line is projected to fall from 14.2% in 2026 to 12.1% by 2028, Al Jazeera reported.
- The top 10% of workers earned about 13 times as much as the bottom 10% in 2023, Al Jazeera reported.
- Rural poverty at the $4.20 line was 19.3%, compared with 8.6% in cities, Insights IAS reported, citing the World Bank’s Poverty and Equity Brief.
What drove the decline
“This progress was mainly driven by strong consumption growth, rising employment, especially among women, and expanded social transfers, including food subsidies,” the report’s authors wrote, Al Jazeera reported.
“A historic fall in poverty. A generational rise in opportunity,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote on Instagram, Al Jazeera reported.
Economists question the picture
“The absolute number of the poor in our country is still the highest in the world for sheer size of population,” development economist Santosh Mehrotra told Al Jazeera.
“These are not signs of a dynamic economy with falling poverty,” said Jayati Ghosh, an economist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Al Jazeera reported.
Surjit Bhalla, a former International Monetary Fund executive director, called World Bank data the “gold standard,” Al Jazeera reported.
Conflicting figures
Sources differ on how many people remain below the $4.20 line. Insights IAS put the number at about 342 million (34.23 crore). Nitin Kumar Bharti, a lecturer at the University of Western Australia, told Al Jazeera the figure was 233 million.
Related coverage
Sources
- Al Jazeera, “How India pulled 500 million people out of poverty as inequality deepens,” Nov. 3, 2026
- Insights IAS, “The World Bank’s Poverty & Equity Brief,” Nov. 2, 2026
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