Poor Indians

India now is ahead of only Sub-Saharan Africa among developing countries in terms of the percentage of population below the poverty line, though it fared better than China on this count in 1990, according to the World Bank. The multilateral lender, in its recently released report ‘Global Economic Prospects for 2009’, said a quarter of India’s population will be living in extreme poverty, on less than $1.25 a day, in 2015. The corresponding figures for China is 6.1% and for Sub-Saharan Africa 37.1%. These are based on purchasing power parity exchange rates derived from the 2005 price surveys, meaning that the calculations have been made assuming a dollar’s purchasing power to be the same in the years under consideration as in 2005. According to the World Bank’s poverty forecast, China had 60.2% of its population living on less than $1.25 a day in 1990, compared to India’s 51.3%. However, 15 years later in 2005, China had 15.9% of its population living in extreme poverty as compared to India’s 41.6% living on less than $1.25 a day, the international poverty line. “Much of decline in global poverty between 1990 and 2005 results from increased incomes in China, where the level of extreme poverty fell from over 60% in 1990 to less than 16% in 2005,” the report said. Compared with the measures provided by the market exchange rates, the purchasing power parity exchange rates provide a more accurate measure of the affordability of nontraded goods in the poverty basket, WB said. “The international poverty line is meant to capture a notion of extreme poverty. As such, it is calculated as the average poverty line of the poorest countries,” the bank said. Further, it said the poverty line, measured at $1.25 in 2005, represents the average of the poverty lines of 15 poorest countries, for which there is data. According to the report, the number of Indians living in extreme poverty were 43.6 crore (51.3%) in 1990, 45.6 crore (41.6%) in 2005, and will be 31.3 crore (25.4%) in 2015. “East Asia and Pacific region has surpassed its individual target, and S Asia is on target,” the WB said.