The latest report by the World Bank has suggested that 71 million people across the globe may have been pushed into extreme poverty due to the pandemic in 2020. And, out of these, nearly 79% of people were from India.
The report titled “Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2022” stated that the pandemic proved to be a major setback to global poverty. It led to a rise in the global extreme poverty rate, which increased from 8.4 per cent in 2019 to 9.3 per cent in 2020.
The World Bank claims that the most populous nations were the main cause of the rise in global poverty. According to the report, India was responsible for 56 million of the 71 million increase in the number of people living in poverty.
However, it highlighted that China, despite being the most populated country, did not contribute much to the global poverty increase in 2020. The country experienced a “moderate economic shock in 2020”.
The report also noted that India witnessed a “pronounced economic contraction” in the same year.
Data from the Consumer Pyramids Household Survey (CPHS), conducted by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, a private data company, was used for the report. CPHS data was used to measure poverty, as the Indian government has not released official data on poverty since 2011.
The pandemic hit lower- and middle-income economies the hardest, with the poor “disproportionately” impacted due to the economic slowdown during the COVID pandemic.
