Assessing Indian poverty: Bleak House or Great Expectations?

livemint.com:

poverty line is crossed. That is, poverty has traditionally been measured against a defined standard/level. However, the intensity of poverty can vary even within that standard, which itself is a subject of much debate.

Based on the Alkire-Foster methodology, the recently released Niti Aayog Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) seeks to address this by synthesizing the poverty headcount ratio with depth of poverty as measured by an average deprivation score, which captures levels of it experienced by multi-dimensionally ‘poor’ individuals. The Index uses three dimensions—Health, Education and Standard of Living—across 12 indicators: access to drinking water, electricity, maternal health, school attendance, etc. The estimated proportion of India’s population in multidimensional poverty declined from 24.85% to 14.96% between 2015-16 and 2019-21.

This decline is particularly sharp in rural areas, where the proportion reduced from 32.59% in 2015-16 to 19.28% in 2019-21. Overall, this reduction indicates that, at the 2021 projected population levels, about 135.5 million persons have exited poverty between 2015-16 and 2019-21. At the same time, intensity of poverty reduced from 47.14% to 44.39%.

Here also, the decline was sharper in rural areas. This reading indicates that along with absolute numbers, average deprivation among those in multidimensional poverty also reduced. At this pace, the report predicts that India is well on course to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal target 1.2, relating to the reduction of poverty by half, much ahead of the 2030 target.