Global Poverty Trends and the Situation in India

Poverty remains one of the most persistent and complex challenges of our time. Despite decades of global effort, economic growth, and targeted policy interventions, hundreds of millions of people still lack access to basic necessities – food, clean water, healthcare, and education. Understanding the scale of poverty, both globally and in countries like India, is the first step toward addressing it. And the data, from the World Bank to the United Nations Development Programme, tells a story that is both encouraging and deeply sobering.

Defining poverty: more than just income
The global poverty situation today
The COVID-19 setback
The poverty situation in India
Persistent gaps and regional disparities
Why reducing poverty matters: ethical and self-interest reasons
The Millennium Development Goals: what they achieved
Where the MDGs fell short
The challenges that remain

Defining poverty: more than just income

When most people think of poverty, they think of low income. But poverty is multidimensional. The World Bank measures extreme poverty as living on less than a set international poverty line per day – most recently updated to $3.00 per person per day (in 2021 purchasing power parity terms) following a June 2025 revision of global poverty lines. Beyond income, the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), jointly developed by UNDP and Oxford’s Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), captures deprivations in health, education, and living standards – painting a much fuller picture of what it actually means to be poor.

The global poverty situation today

The most recent data from the World Bank is striking. As of 2024, approximately 847 million people live in extreme poverty – representing around 10.4 percent of the global population. This figure is a slight upward revision from earlier estimates, driven largely by worsening conditions in parts of South Asia and the Middle East and North Africa. And while projections suggest a modest decline to about 10 percent by 2026, the pace of reduction has slowed sharply compared to the pre-pandemic era.

The geographic concentration of poverty is stark. Two-thirds of the world’s extreme poor live in Sub-Saharan Africa, rising to three-quarters when fragile and conflict-affected countries are included. Meanwhile, around 3.5 billion people – 44 percent of the global population – remain poor by the standard relevant for upper-middle-income countries, and this figure has barely changed since the 1990s. This tells us that even as extreme deprivation declines at the margins, a vast “middle poverty” persists with little sign of resolution.

The COVID-19 setback

The pandemic dealt a significant blow to global poverty reduction efforts. COVID-19 increased extreme poverty from 8.9 percent in 2019 to 9.7 percent in 2020 – the first rise in global poverty in decades. South Asia was hit particularly hard, with extreme poverty rising by 2.4 percentage points in that single year. By 2022, most regions had recovered to pre-pandemic levels, but low-income countries continued to lag, facing additional shocks from inflation triggered by the Russia-Ukraine war. In the 75 most vulnerable countries that qualify for World Bank concessional lending, one in four people still live in extreme poverty – a rate more than eight times the global average outside those nations.

The poverty situation in India

India’s poverty story is one of remarkable progress, but also of persisting challenges. With a population of over 1.4 billion, even small percentage changes translate into tens of millions of people. According to the World Bank’s Spring 2025 Poverty and Equity Brief, the proportion of Indians living on less than $2.15 per day – the old international benchmark for extreme poverty – fell sharply from 16.2 percent in 2011-12 to just 2.3 percent in 2022-23, lifting 171 million people out of extreme poverty over that decade. Rural extreme poverty dropped from 18.4 percent to 2.8 percent, while urban extreme poverty declined from 10.7 percent to 1.1 percent in the same period.

On the multidimensional front, India’s MPI value fell from 29.17 percent in 2013-14 to 11.28 percent in 2022-23, with approximately 248 million people escaping multidimensional poverty over nine years. The rate of decline actually accelerated between 2015-16 and 2022-23, largely attributed to government welfare programmes targeting nutrition, sanitation, cooking fuel, and financial inclusion. India is now projected to reach single-digit multidimensional poverty – a milestone that seemed distant not long ago.

Persistent gaps and regional disparities

Despite this progress, the picture is uneven. Rural poverty in India stood at 19.28 percent in 2019-21, compared to 5.27 percent in urban areas – a divide that underscores how geography continues to determine life outcomes. States like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Madhya Pradesh still account for a disproportionate share of the country’s poor, even as they have also recorded the largest absolute reductions. The 2024 Global MPI report by UNDP and OPHI noted that 16.4 percent of India’s population was still multidimensionally poor as of 2019-21, with an additional 18.7 percent classified as vulnerable – meaning nearly a third of Indians remain at or near the edge of poverty.

Why reducing poverty matters: ethical and self-interest reasons

The argument for reducing poverty operates on two levels. The first is ethical: allowing hundreds of millions of human beings to live without adequate food, healthcare, or education is a moral failure – regardless of national borders. The second is practical. Poverty is deeply connected to global instability. Communities trapped in extreme deprivation are more vulnerable to disease outbreaks, radicalization, and conflict, all of which have consequences far beyond their immediate geography. The COVID-19 pandemic showed precisely how health crises originating in poor, underserved communities can rapidly become global emergencies. Economic instability in low-income countries also suppresses global trade and growth, affecting wealthier nations through reduced markets and supply chain disruptions. In short, poverty reduction is both a humanitarian imperative and a matter of global self-interest.

The Millennium Development Goals: what they achieved

The most ambitious coordinated effort to address global poverty before the current era was the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Adopted by all 189 UN member states in September 2000, the MDGs set eight goals to be achieved by 2015, covering poverty, hunger, education, gender equality, child and maternal health, disease, environmental sustainability, and global partnership.

The results were significant. The number of people living in extreme poverty fell by more than half, from 1.9 billion in 1990 to 836 million in 2015. The target of halving the extreme poverty rate was met five years ahead of the 2015 deadline. Access to safe drinking water improved substantially, primary school enrolment in developing regions rose to 91 percent, and major progress was made against diseases like malaria and tuberculosis. The UN Secretary General described the MDGs as helping lift more than one billion people out of extreme poverty and enabling more girls to attend school than ever before – a genuine achievement by any measure.

Where the MDGs fell short

Yet the MDGs also revealed the limits of top-down goal-setting. Progress was highly uneven. The reduction in global income poverty was driven primarily by rapid growth in a handful of Asian countries, including China, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam, rather than by a broad-based global lift. Sub-Saharan Africa made significant strides in some areas but remained far behind global averages. Growing inequality in both social and spatial terms was not meaningfully addressed by the MDG framework, which focused on national averages and overlooked how gains were distributed. The hunger target was narrowly missed, universal primary education remained out of reach in many regions, and about 1.5 billion people in conflict-affected and marginalized communities were largely left behind.

These shortcomings informed the design of the MDGs’ successor framework – the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted in 2015 – which expanded the scope to 17 goals, applied them universally to all countries (not just developing ones), and gave significantly more attention to inequality and environmental sustainability.

The challenges that remain

The road ahead is complicated by several converging pressures. Climate change is emerging as a major driver of poverty, particularly in low-income countries most exposed to floods, droughts, and crop failure. The World Bank’s Poverty, Prosperity, and Planet Report 2024 describes a “polycrisis” – an environment where multiple interconnected challenges, including slow growth, climate shocks, and rising inequality, are hitting simultaneously, making progress on poverty increasingly difficult to sustain. Based on current trajectories, the goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030, a core target under the SDGs, appears out of reach. An estimated 622 million people are still projected to live in extreme poverty in 2030 – more than the entire population of the European Union.

In India specifically, challenges of quality – not just quantity – remain. Millions who have escaped income poverty still face deprivations in nutrition, learning outcomes, and access to healthcare. Inequality between states, between genders, and between rural and urban populations continues to shape who benefits from growth and who does not. The sheer scale of India’s population also means that even a small percentage living in poverty represents tens of millions of individuals.

Addressing these challenges requires moving beyond income transfers and social welfare programmes, toward structural changes: better-paying jobs, quality education, universal health coverage, and climate-resilient infrastructure. No single intervention will be enough. What has consistently worked, the evidence shows, is sustained political commitment backed by reliable data and inclusive policies that reach those most left behind.

What do you think? Given that poverty reduction in the MDG era was driven largely by a few fast-growing Asian economies, does the global community have a shared responsibility to lift countries where growth remains slow and conflict is persistent? And with climate change increasingly pushing vulnerable populations back into poverty, how should the global conversation on development shift to address this new reality?

References

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Table of Contents

Defining poverty: more than just income 🔗

The global poverty situation today 🔗

The COVID-19 setback 🔗

The poverty situation in India 🔗

Persistent gaps and regional disparities 🔗

Why reducing poverty matters: ethical and self-interest reasons 🔗

The Millennium Development Goals: what they achieved 🔗

Where the MDGs fell short 🔗

The challenges that remain 🔗