ECONOMY
India’s extreme poverty rate dips to 5.3% as World Bank raises threshold to $3/day
- IBJ Bureau
- Jun 08, 2025
India’s extreme poverty rate declined sharply to 5.3% over a decade from 27.1 per cent in 2011-12, even as the World Bank revised upwards its threshold poverty line to $3 per day.
Given India’s inflation rate between 2017 and 2021, a revised extreme poverty line of $3 would constitute a 15 per cent higher threshold than $2.15 expressed in 2021 prices and result in a 5.3 per cent poverty rate in 2022-23, the World Bank has said in a report.
In India, the report said, 5,46,95,832 people lived on less than $3 per day in 2024. Thus, the poverty rate at $3 per day accounts for 5.44 per cent of the population in 2024.
The extreme poverty rate decreased from 16.2 to 2.3 per cent between 2011-12 and 2022-23, while the poverty rate at the lower middle income country (LMIC) line declined by 33.7 percentage points, it said.
Free and subsidised food transfers supported poverty reduction, and the rural-urban poverty gap narrowed. The five most populous States account for 54 per cent of the extremely poor, it said.
With regard to economy, the report said, that real GDP of India was around 5 per cent below the pre-pandemic trend level as of FY25.
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