27.1% To 2.6%: India’s Extreme Poverty Plunges, 496 Million Lifted Out, Says World Bank

How did India cut poverty so fast? The World Bank points to consumption, jobs for women and food subsidies. Know the full numbers

PGurus Newsdesk

October 30, 2026

Extreme poverty at 2.6%, but 57% of India’s poor live in one belt. Read what the World Bank says about progress and remaining challenges

Report credits consumption growth, more jobs for women and expanded food subsidies

India has lifted an estimated 496 million people out of poverty between 2011 and 2023, according to the World Bank’s October 2026 Poverty and Equity Brief. The share of the population in extreme poverty fell from 27.1 per cent to 2.6 per cent.

The World Bank called it one of the fastest poverty declines in the world, with gains on both monetary and non-monetary measures. At the lower-middle-income line of USD 4.20 a day (2021 PPP), the poverty rate dropped from 57.7 per cent to 16.1 per cent.

The report credits strong consumption growth, rising employment, especially among women, and expanded social transfers, including food subsidies. Employment grew by about 134 million between 2017 and 2023, nearly twice the growth in the working-age population, with much of the rise coming from rural women entering paid work.

Non-monetary poverty also fell. On the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative’s Multidimensional Poverty Index, the rate went from 53.8 per cent in 2005-06 to 16.4 per cent in 2019-21. The World Bank’s own multidimensional measure was 15.5 per cent in 2022-23.

Looking ahead, the Bank projects further decline at a slower pace: the poverty rate at USD 4.20 a day could fall from 14.2 per cent in 2026 to 12.1 per cent by 2028. It cautioned that these are indicative microsimulation estimates and could change with new data.

The report also flags challenges. About 57 per cent of India’s poor live in a contiguous belt from Uttar Pradesh to West Bengal. Youth unemployment rose from 14.6 per cent to 15.9 per cent between the first quarters of FY26 and FY27, especially among rural young women. Real earnings stayed broadly flat, and much of the job growth was in low-productivity work. The Bank added that the figures come from household consumption surveys and that some recent gains may partly reflect better measurement.

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