In its October 2026 Poverty and Equity Brief , the World Bank shows a sharp decline in extreme poverty in India between 2011 and 2024.
The World Bank’s methodology note warns of comparability problems and says changes in survey methods can substantially affect measured poverty.
The World Bank’s brief projects poverty at the $4.20/day line to decline from 14.2% in 2026 to 12.1% by 2028.
The World Bank’s October 2026 Poverty & Equity Brief records India’s progress as one of the fastest poverty declines in the world.
Way forwardThe World Bank’s numbers must be used to measure how much poverty in India has declined and how securely.
In its October 2026 Poverty and Equity Brief , the World Bank shows a sharp decline in extreme poverty in India between 2011 and 2024. But there are significant shortcomings in its calculations.
The bank says that India’s extreme poverty rate fell from 27.1% in 2011-’12 to 2.6% in 2023-’24, and that an estimated 496 million people escaped poverty over the period. This, the bank said, was one of the fastest declines anywhere in the world.
India has made real gains in food security, housing, electricity and banking for poorer households but the Bank’s estimates are based on flawed data.
For one, it is unclear how the World Bank arrived at the estimate when data on India’s household consumption can no longer be compared due to changes in survey methods.
Second, the large decline conceals the nature of poverty among Indians, including borderline existence where one setback can push a household or family back into poverty.
Data problems
The government think tank, NITI Aayog, says multidimensional poverty fell from 29.17% in 2013-’14 to 11.28% in 2022-’23, with about 24.82 crore people moving out of poverty . These estimates were arrived at based on calculations made using data from the three rounds of the National Family Health Surveys.
Other economists using India’s own poverty lines have also found low figures for 2022-’23, as The Wire’s review of one such calculation notes. Defenders of the numbers point to expanded food transfers, housing, sanitation and electricity as real improvements in people’s lives.
The estimate compares household consumption surveys that were designed very differently. India’s consumption surveys are conducted by the National Sample Survey Office under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation.
They measure how much households spend each month on necessities such as food, clothing, rent, transport, health, education and more, which help indicate living standards and purchasing power for the economy.
In the 2011-’12 round, surveyors took down spending details from households in a single visit. The newer Household Consumption Expenditure Surveys of 2022-’23 and 2023-’24 spread this out over multiple visits, separate questionnaires for different kinds of spending, and a changed sampling design.
This difference means the two rounds are not strictly comparable , so some of the apparent rise in spending may reflect the new method, and any poverty estimates should account for this. The Indian government had withheld the 2017-’18 consumption survey , and has not updated its official poverty line since 2011-’12 – it still stands at Rs 32 per day. Instead, the government has relied on other estimates to calculate a reduction in poverty.
The World Bank’s methodology note warns of comparability problems and says changes in survey methods can substantially affect measured poverty. It tries to correct for them, but without a bridge survey that measures consumption under both methods, it is unclear how distorted the data might be.
The World Bank’s numbers have also changed sharply in a short span: in 2025, it said extreme poverty in India was at 5.3% for 2022-’23, using the same bar of $3 a day. The new brief puts it at 2.6% a year later. It is possible that poverty halved in a year, but it is also possible that the measure is sensitive to survey design.
The bar is low
The World Bank’s international poverty line of $3 a day is based on purchasing power parity, or PPP, at 2021 prices. It measures what $3 can buy in every country. In India, that works out to roughly Rs 60 per person per day. The international poverty line, however, is meant for the world’s poorest countries. For lower-middle-income countries like India, the World Bank’s framework uses a higher line of $4.20, about Rs 84 a day, in terms of purchasing power parity.
With that as the bar, the share of Indians surviving on less than Rs 82 per day falls from 57.7% to about 16%, which still leaves roughly 23 crore people. It means that roughly three in five Indians were below the line in 2011-’12, and now about one in six are.
Even as per this definition, a household spending a little over Rs 84 per person a day is not poor but precariously positioned where an illness or job loss can push the family into poverty. The World Bank’s brief projects poverty at the $4.20/day line to decline from 14.2% in 2026 to 12.1% by 2028.
The World Bank brief also measured the rural-urban divide in poverty rates. At the $4.20 line, 19.3% of the rural population is poor, while among the urban population, it is 8.6%. This indicates that poverty in India is concentrated in rural areas, so the countryside accounts for most of the country’s remaining poor. Despite employment growth, much of the rural job creation has been in low-productivity work, which limits how far it lifts household incomes.
The World Bank’s October 2026 Poverty & Equity Brief records India’s progress as one of the fastest poverty declines in the world.
The report highlights several significant gains:
✅ 49.6 crore people moved above the lower-middle-income poverty line of $4.20 a day between 2011… — Nirmala Sitharaman (@nsitharaman) October 30, 2026
Poor jobs growth, stagnant wages
The brief acknowledges stagnant real earnings and higher youth unemployment.
A critical analysis of the report notes that agricultural employment has risen in recent years, which runs against the usual path of development, in which labour moves from farms to factories and services.
Similarly, much of the increase in female labour force participation has come through self-employment and unpaid help in family enterprises, particularly in farming. For instance, Periodic Labour Force Survey data issued this year shows that about 73.5% of rural women workers were engaged in agriculture and 72.7% were self-employed in January-March, while only about 11% held regular salaried jobs.
These women are counted as workers, but their work may add little to household earnings, and does not count the hours spent in unpaid domestic chores and household care work.
The World Bank’s brief counts employment growth among the factors, including welfare and food transfers, leading to a fall in poverty while also saying that real earnings have barely moved. It falls short of explaining the dramatic reduction in poverty.
Who is missing from the survey?
Household consumption surveys also have limits on who they reach. Surveys sample households at a fixed address, and are likely to be less suited to capturing people whose work takes them from place to place, such as seasonal migrants in brick kilns and construction sites. The World Bank acknowledges that the richest households are poorly captured, which can understate inequality.
The Bank’s consumption-based inequality measure shows a decline, while its own data show the top-earning tenth of workers making about 13 times what the bottom tenth earns.
Consumption, income and wealth are different things, and a fall in one says little about the others. Consumption is what households spend, income is what they earn, and wealth is what they own after debts.
A family can keep spending from savings or through borrowing, and can spend more when prices fall even if its income is flat. The festive season shows the difference: last year’s record Diwali sales were driven largely by cuts in the Goods and Services Tax, which lowered prices. This year, spending is expected to decline amid inflation and borrowing costs.
Way forward
The World Bank’s numbers must be used to measure how much poverty in India has declined and how securely.
India should collect consumption data under both the old and new methods in the same households, so that researchers can separate real change from measurement change. Accurate and comparable data on earnings, the quality of employment, and the time women spend on unpaid care are crucial to understanding India’s poverty decline.
Pintu Paul is an Assistant Professor at the School of Public Policy and Governance, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Hyderabad. He holds a PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Email: [email protected].
