India among five countries with largest number of people living in poverty: UN report

United Nations: India is among the five countries globally with the largest number of people living in poverty, according to the UN report that said 1.1 billion people, over half of them minors, live in acute poverty worldwide.

The latest update of the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) was released on Thursday by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) based at the University of Oxford.

It said that 1.1 billion people live in acute poverty worldwide, with 40 per cent living in countries experiencing war, fragility and/or low peacefulness, according to at least one of the three widely used datasets of conflict settings.

India has 234 million people living in poverty, which is medium Human Development Index, placing the country among five globally with the largest number of people living in poverty.

“The other four countries are Pakistan (93 million), Ethiopia (86 million), Nigeria (74 million) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (66 million), all low HDI,” it said.

Together, these five countries account for nearly half (48.1 per cent) of the 1.1 billion poor people,” it said.

The report added that a “staggering" 455 million of the world’s poor live in countries exposed to violent conflict, hindering and even reversing hard-won progress to reduce poverty.

“Conflicts have intensified and multiplied in recent years, reaching new highs in casualties, displacing record millions of people, and causing widespread disruption to lives and livelihoods,” said Achim Steiner, UNDP Administrator.

“Our new research shows that of the 1.1 billion people living in multidimensional poverty, almost half a billion live in countries exposed to violent conflict.

“We must accelerate action to support them. We need resources and access for specialized development and early recovery interventions to help break the cycle of poverty and crisis.” The report notes that over half of the 1.1 billion poor people are children under the age of 18 (584 million). Globally, 27.9 per cent of children live in poverty, compared with 13.5 per cent of adults.

Large proportions of the 1.1 billion poor people lack adequate sanitation (828 million), housing (886 million) or cooking fuel (998 million). Well over half of the 1.1 billion poor people live with a person who is undernourished in their household (637 million).

In South Asia 272 million poor people live in households with at least one undernourished person, and in Sub- Saharan Africa 256 million do, it said.

About 83.7 per cent of poor people live in rural areas. Across all world regions people in rural areas are poorer than people in urban areas. Overall, 28.0 per cent of the global rural population are poor, compared with 6.6 per cent of the urban population.

Of the 1.1 billion poor people, 218 million (19.0 per cent) live in war-affected countries. Nearly 40 per cent of poor people (455 million) live in countries experiencing war, fragility and/or low peacefulness, according to at least one of three widely used definitions, the report said.

While national rates vary, overall, in countries affected by war, the incidence of poverty is 34.8 per cent, much higher than the 10.9 per cent in countries not affected by war or minor conflicts.

Multidimensional poverty is also more than twice as high in fragile and conflict-affected and low-peacefulness countries, it said.

The year’s report features original statistical research on multidimensional poverty for 112 countries and 6.3 billion people, as well as fine-grained analysis of the relationship between conflict and poverty, it added.

The UN noted that due to lack of data, the global MPI is measured over a 10-year period (2012-2023) to create a comparable index of global levels and trends.