This Article is From Oct 05, 2015

India's Poverty Rate Lowest Among Countries with Poor Population: Report

India's Poverty Rate Lowest Among Countries with Poor Population: Report

India has the lowest poverty rate amongst those countries with largest poor population in the world, according to a World Bank report.

Washington, United States: Even though India accounted for the largest number of poor people in any country in 2012, but its poverty rate was lowest among countries having large number of such population, a latest World Bank report has said.

Noting that rural electrification in India has caused changes in consumption and earnings, increase in the labour supply of both men and women, and promotion of girls' schooling by reallocating their time to tasks more conducive to school attendance has been a positive step, said the report.

Investment in integration and connectivity through railroads in India helped reduce the exposure of agricultural prices and real income to rainfall shocks, and helped diminish the famine and mortality risks associated with recurrent weather shocks, it said.

"India was home to the largest number of poor in 2012, but its poverty rate is one of the lowest among those countries with the largest number of poor," the bank said.

In its report, the bank uses an updated international poverty line of USD 1.9 a day, which incorporates new information on differences in the cost of living across countries. The new line preserves the real purchasing power of the previous line (of USD 1.25 a day in 2005 prices) in the world's poorest countries.

Using this new line (as well as new country-level data on living standards), the bank projects that global poverty will fall from 902 million people or 12.8 per cent of the global population in 2012 to 702 million people or 9.6 per cent of the global population this year.

"This is the best story in the world today - these projections show us that we are the first generation in human history that can end extreme poverty," World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim said.

Part of the reason is that four nations with the largest populations were once classified as low-income but have moved into lower-middle-income category, China, India, Indonesia and Nigeria.
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