India lifted 271 mn people out of poverty between 2006 and 2016: UN
July 12, 2019  11:40
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India lifted 271 million people out of poverty between 2006 and 2016, recording the fastest reductions in the multidimensional poverty index values during the period with strong improvements in areas such as "assets, cooking fuel, sanitation and nutrition," a report by the United Nations said. 


The 2019 global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) from the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) was released Thursday. 


The report said that in the 101 countries studied '" 31 low income, 68 middle income and 2 high income - 1.3 billion people are "multidimensionally poor", which means that poverty is defined not simply by income, but by a number of indicators, including poor health, poor quality of work and the threat of violence. The report identifies 10 countries, with a combined population of around 2 billion people, to illustrate the level of poverty reduction, and all of them have shown statistically significant progress towards achieving Sustainable Development Goal 1, namely ending poverty "in all its forms, everywhere". 


The 10 countries are Bangladesh, Cambodia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Haiti, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru and Vietnam. 


The report said that within these 10 countries, data shows that 270 million people moved out of multidimensional poverty from one survey to the next. "This progress was largely driven by South Asia. In India, there were 271 million fewer people in poverty in 2016 than in 2006, while in Bangladesh the number dropped by 19 million between 2004 and 2014," it said. 


Noting the examples of pro-poor reduction, where the poorest regions improved the fastest, the report said that Jharkhand in India reduced the incidence of multidimensional poverty from 74.9 per cent in 2005-06 to 46.5 per cent in 2015-16.
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