How To Measure Poverty

A neat separation of poverty estimates and entitlements won’t pass muster.

There wAS much hope about the work that Arvind Panagariya was mandated to do on the measurement of poverty. I, for one, have held from the 1980s that the official poverty line that emerged from a taskforce I chaired in 1976-77 should be shelved. Panagariya has reportedly suggested that the Tendulkar Committee’s report should be accepted for poverty estimation but socio-economic indicators, say, as collected by the Socio-Economic Caste Census, should be used to determine entitlement for benefits, an approach suggested earlier by N.C. Saxena. This is important because while earlier Centrally sponsored schemes have been curtailed, a large number of new schemes have been announced in the Union budget. The Panagariya Panel on poverty has separated the two exercises — entitlement for schemes and poverty estimates, the latter to be used for assessments of economic performance.

The Tendulkar Committee had, in fact, used the official poverty line or the Alagh poverty line, based on cut-off points defined in terms of calorie consumption. Happy with the existing urban poverty ratio or head-count ratio of 25.7 per cent derived from the Alagh taskforce — as adapted for price adjustment from time to time — it suggested that the expenditure required to meet this goal should be the poverty line for both rural and, of course, urban areas. We are critical of the official poverty line, but they “found it desirable in the interest of continuity to situate it in some generally acceptable aspect of the present exercise”. Like Banquo’s ghost, the Alagh taskforce cast its shadow, possibly since Tendulkar was a member.

But the Tendulkar report had many advantages. For one, it shifted the emphasis from calories to food demand. In its logical structure, the Alagh taskforce permitted this but the focus then was on foodgrains, with price elasticities calculated separately for the rich and the poor, leading to dual pricing. The Tendulkar Committee framework calculates the food purchasing power and then lets the poor substitute between food items.

It works in a framework where the state will not have the responsibility for the education and health needs, or for that matter drinking water needs, of the poor. Here, the Tendulkar Committee was one-sided in stating that “the earlier poverty lines assumed that basic social services of health and education would be supplied by the state”. It did not clarify that the taskforce stated that the state must have a “basic needs plan” and give it the highest priority.

The Tendulkar report had a concept of inclusive growth where the state does not take on itself such pro-poor responsibilities but provides income supplements. It shows that with these supplements, the new poverty line would correspond to standards that would lead to physical nutrition norms being met on an average. Statistically, this part of the report, overlaying averages of nutrition norms with food expenditure is creative. A more serious issue is that if expenditures on education and health are included in the poverty line calculations, how do we account for public expenditures on them — or are we happy with double counting?

But will the present standard dividing the poor and the rich, and that too based on the 1979 line in urban areas, be acceptable as a norm?

I have been making the point that following nutrition norms does not require policy to go overboard. Here, the Saxena Committee for defining concepts for the next BPL census goes overboard and comes out with very high numbers. Food security can be achieved at much lower costs than Saxena suggests, but he scores in his emphasis on access to social facilities and asset and education opportunities, for which he suggests a system of deprivation points based on many indicators, including caste, asset positions, educational achievements, and so on. Saxena recognises that different entitlement systems will be required for different facilities — a valid point but a real-world nightmare.

There are, therefore, many debatable issues. In the excellent technical note to the BPL report, K.L. Datta has explained at length the complexity of the relationship between calorie consumption and poverty, and P. Sainath the issue that some facilities have to be universally provided. Saxena takes on the issue of entitlements head-on, but Tendulkar sidesteps it. Panagariya will have to cope with all this and it is likely that a neat separation of poverty estimation and entitlements won’t pass muster.

The writer, former vice chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, is professor emeritus, Sardar Patel Institute, Ahmedabad.

Source: Indian Express, 26-04-2016

Richest 1% own more than the rest of us: Oxfam

The richest one percent of the world’s population now own more than the rest of us combined, aid group Oxfam said Monday, on the eve of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos.

“Runaway inequality has created a world where 62 people own as much wealth as the poorest half of the world’s population -- a figure that has fallen from 388 just five years ago,” the anti-poverty agency said in its reported published ahead of the annual gathering of the world’s financial and political elites in Davos.

The report, entitled “An Economy for the 1%”, states that women are disproportionately affected by the global inequality.

“One of the other key trends behind rising inequality set out in Oxfam International’s report is the falling share of national income going to workers in almost all developed and most developing countries... The majority of low paid workers around the world are women.”

Although world leaders have increasingly talked about the need to tackle inequality “the gap between the richest and the rest has widened dramatically in the past 12 months,” Oxfam said.

Oxfam’s prediction, made ahead of last year’s Davos meeting, that the richest one percent would soon own more than the rest of us, “actually came true in 2015,” it added.

While the number of people living in extreme poverty halved between 1990 and 2010, the average annual income of the poorest 10 percent has risen by less than $3-a-year in the past quarter of a century, a increase in individuals’ income of less than one cent a year, the report said.

‘Few dozen super-rich people’

More than 40 heads of state and government will attend the Davos forum which begins late Tuesday and will end on January 23.

Those heading to the Swiss resort town for the high-level annual gathering also include 2,500 “leaders from business and society”, the WEF said in an earlier statement.

Describing the theme -- the Fourth Industrial Revolution -- WEF founder Klaus Shwab has said it “refers to the fusion of technologies across the physical, digital and biological worlds which is creating entirely new capabilities and dramatic impacts on political, social and economic systems.”

Oxfam International Executive Director Winnie Byanima, who will also attend Davos having co-chaired last year’s event, said: “It is simply unacceptable that the poorest half of the world’s population owns no more than a few dozen super-rich people who could fit onto one bus.”

World leaders’ concerns about the escalating inequality crisis have “so far not translated into concrete action -- the world has become a much more unequal place and the trend is accelerating,” she warned.

End tax-havens era

As a priority, Oxfam is calling for an end to the era of tax havens which has seen the increasing use of offshore centres to avoid paying taxes.

“This has denied governments valuable resources needed to tackle poverty and inequality,” the report said.

As much as 30 percent of all African financial wealth is estimated to be held offshore, it added, costing an estimated $14 billion in lost tax revenues every year.

Getting hold of the proper level of taxes will be “vital” if world leaders are to meet their goal, set last September, of eliminating extreme poverty by 2030.

Byanima challenged those attending the Davos meeting “to play their part in ending the era of tax havens, which is fuelling economic inequality and preventing hundreds of millions of people lifting themselves out of poverty”.

Of the 62 people said to hold as much wealth as the poorest 50 percent, Oxfam said that 53 are men and just nine are female, highlighting that women are ill-represented even at the highest levels.

The headline Davos guests include British Prime Minister David Cameron, US Vice President Joe Biden, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls and newly-elected Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

President Mauricio Marci of Argentina, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Alexis Tsipars, the Greek prime minister, are also due to attend.

Oxfam said it had calculated the wealth of the richest 62 people using Forbes’ billionaires list.

Source: Hindustan Times, 18-01-2015

How deep is India’s poverty?

A recent World Bank (WB) report brought out poverty ratios across countries. According to these estimates, poverty in India in 2011-12 could be as low as 12.4 per cent if we use “modified mixed reference period” (MMRP), in which there are three recall periods depending on the nature of items. This contrasts with the Rangarajan committee estimates of 29.5 per cent. The poverty line (PL) used by the Rangarajan committee for India was around Rs 1,105 per capita per month. That translates to $2.44 per capita per day, in terms of purchasing power parity. As such, the WB’s PL of $1.90 per capita per day is only about 78 per cent of the PL used by the Rangarajan committee. The lower PL is the reason for the lower poverty ratio estimated by the WB. However, the WB report also talks about the depth of poverty in terms of person-equivalent headcounts. According to the report, the depth elasticity at the global level between 1990 and 2012 was 1.18. In other words, the reductions in traditional head count ratios were accompanied by even larger reductions in person-equivalent poverty ratios. This is true in the regions where the bulk of the poor reside, such as South Asia.

Here, we examine the depth of poverty in India in a different way — by looking at the poverty ratios using different cut-offs of the PL. The first issue is whether the poverty ratios with lowered PL cut-offs are declining as fast as those with raised PL cut-offs. The second issue is the location of the poor, that is, whether the poor are located much below the PL or around the PL.

One conclusion is that even if we raise the PL to 125 per cent of what it is, the reduction in the poverty ratio was 9 percentage points between 2009-10 and 2011-12 (Table 1). This is also true for the poverty ratio based on 115 per cent of the PL. In the case of 85 per cent and 75 per cent of the PL, the percentage point decline was lower than those with the raised PL. But if we adjust for base poverty ratio, its decline was faster for 85 per cent of the PL and 75 per cent of the PL as compared to those between the PL and 125 per cent of the PL.

Headcount ratio is often criticised on the ground that it does not measure the “depth” of poverty. It is seen, however, that more than 50 per cent of the poor lie between the PL and 75 per cent of the PL. This is true for both 2009-10 and 2011-12. In fact, 65 per cent of the rural poor and 61 per cent total poor lie between the PL and 75 per cent of the PL in 2011-12. It may also be noted that many of the non-poor also live just above the PL between 115 per cent of the PL and the PL or between 125 per cent of the PL and the PL.

Another point is that there is a negligible population below 50 per cent of the PL — less than 2 per cent in 2011-12.

We also looked at the poverty ratios with different cut-offs of PLs for two relatively poorer states — Bihar and Odisha — and two developed states —Tamil Nadu and Gujarat (Table 2). It provides interesting results. In Bihar and Odisha, the rate of decline in poverty is lower for the raised PL of 125 per cent and 115 per cent, as compared to the PL and the lower cut-offs of 85 of the PL and 75 per cent of the PL. The decline is even faster for these two states at lower cut-offs if we take into account the base poverty ratio. The raised PLs for Odisha reveal only a marginal decline for both 125 per cent of the PL and 115 per cent of the PL. In the case of Gujarat, the decline in percentage points is higher for the raised cut-offs compared to the lowered cut-offs. If we take into account the base effect, the rate of decline is higher for the lowered cut-offs. As far as Tamil Nadu is concerned, the decline in percentage points in poverty was higher for the raised PL compared to those of the lowered PLs. However, if we take the base effect, the rate of change is more or less similar.

As far as a concentration of poverty is concerned, it is clear that in all the four states the bulk of the poor lie between the PL and 75 per cent of the PL. In the case of two advanced states, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, the concentration is even higher. In 2011-12, in Gujarat, 71.5 per cent of the poor were within these limits. In Tamil Nadu, the percentage of the poor falling within these limits is 63 per cent. The proportions are, however, much lower in the case of Bihar and Odisha. In both Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, the percentage of the poor falling between these limits has increased between 2009-10 and 2011-12, indicating a faster decline in the depth of poverty.

There are three conclusions from the all-India and state-wise analysis. First, the rate of decline in poverty ratios for the lowered cut-off is similar or more than those for the PL or the raised PL. Second, poverty is concentrated around the PL. Third, the percentage of population below 50 per cent of the PL is negligible at both all-India and state levels.

The bunching of poverty around the poverty line in India renders the problem of reducing poverty more manageable. The pace and pattern of growth have a significant impact on reducing poverty ratios. But as we have repeatedly emphasised, policymakers must pursue a two-fold strategy of letting the economy grow fast and attacking poverty directly through poverty alleviation programmes.

Rangarajan is chairman, Madras School of Economics, Chennai and Dev is director, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai.

Source: Indian Express, 17-12-2015

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World Bank estimates show fall in India’s poverty rate

12.8 per cent of the global population live in extreme poverty

The World Bank has revised the global poverty line, previously pegged at $1.25 a day to $1.90 a day (approximately Rs. 130). This has been arrived at based on an average of the national poverty lines of 15 poorest economies of the world. The poverty lines were converted from local currency into U.S. dollars using the new 2011 Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) data.

In its latest report ‘Ending Extreme Poverty, Sharing Prosperity: Progress and Policies’, authors Marcio Cruz, James Foster, Bryce Quillin, and Phillip Schellekkens, note that world-wide poverty has shown a decline under these new estimates.

The latest headline estimate for 2012 based on the new data suggests that close to 900 million people (12.8 per cent of the global population) lived in extreme poverty.

With the Sustainable Development Goals adopted in September, seeking to end all forms of poverty world over, the World Bank Group has set itself the target of bringing down the number of people living in extreme poverty to less than 3 per cent of the world population by 2030.

Multi-dimensional poverty

The report also notes that the global poverty line does not currently take the multiple dimensions of poverty into account. There are many non-monetary indicators — on education, health, sanitation, water, electricity, etc. — that are extremely important for understanding the many dimensions of poverty that people experience.

The 2015 Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) counts 1.6 billion people as multi-dimensionally poor, with the largest global share in South Asia and the highest intensity in Sub-Saharan Africa.

These multiple indicators are an important complement to monetary measures of poverty and are crucial to effectively improving the lives of the poorest, the report notes. However, the recently-established Commission on Global Poverty is currently assessing how we measure and understand poverty and how to improve this going forward. According to a WB spokesperson, the CGP recommendations are expected in April 2016.

India poverty figures varies with method

Though home to the largest number of poor in 2012, India's poverty rate is one of the lowest among those countries with the largest number of poor, the latest World Bank report notes. Also in the case of India, with large numbers of people clustered close to the poverty line, poverty estimates are significantly different depending on the recall period in the survey, the authors note.

Since 2015 is the target year for the Millennium Development Goals, the assessment of changes in poverty over time is best based on the Uniform Reference Period (URP) consumption method, which uses a 30-day recall period for calculating consumption expenditures, as per the report. This method, used to set the baseline poverty rates for India in 1990, shows India’s poverty rate for 2011/12 to be 21.2 per cent.

By comparison, the Modified Mixed Reference Period (MMRP), which contains a shorter, seven-day recall period for some food items leads to higher estimates of consumption and therefore lower poverty estimates. “We expect that the MMRP-based estimate (currently at 12.4% for India) will set the baseline for India and global poverty estimates, going forward,” a World Bank spokesperson told The Hindu.

More country specific details will be available once the Global Monitoring Report, using the new estimates, is launched in Washington DC on October 7.

Keywords: poverty line, World Bank, MMRP

Source: The Hindu, 6-10-2015

Besides measuring poverty, India should not overlook inequality

For policymakers, it would be heartening to note that India had the lowest poverty rates among countries that housed a large number of poor people.

The bad news, however, is that India also accounted for the largest number of poor people in any country in 2012, a latest World Bank report has said. While varying estimates of poverty muddy the picture, as does a perverse fiscal incentive for states of claiming inflated incidence, India should not miss the larger issue of inequality.

Economists set a poverty line, or a threshold income, to get a headcount of poor people in a country. Households earning below the threshold, or the poverty line, are considered poor.

Different countries have different methods of defining the threshold income, depending on local socio-economic conditions. In India, a couple of years ago, the national poverty line was fixed at Rs 27.2 a day for rural dwellers and Rs 33.3 for those residing in cities. The erstwhile Planning Commission’s estimates, based on the Tendulkar Committee methodology, show that there were 269.7 million people in India — or 21.9% of the population — that live below the poverty line. According to a study by a panel headed by C Rangarajan, former chairman of the prime minister’s Economic Advisory Council, there were 363 million people, or 29.5% of India’s 1.2 billion people, who lived in poverty in 2011-12.

The Rangarajan panel considers people living on less than Rs 32 a day in rural areas and Rs 47 a day in urban areas as poor. This World Bank report uses an updated international poverty line of $1.90 a day, incorporating differences in the cost of living across countries as well as country-level living standards data. The new projections suggest that there are 231.3 million poor people in South Asia, down from 309.2 million in 2012. Going by the size, it is only logical to assume that the bulk of these people are living in India.

One of the primary objectives of poverty estimates is to provide subsidised entitlements to the poor. The question is: How does one define the poverty line in India in which old yardsticks may not hold good, either in terms of buying food or defining the poor? Do these statistics accurately measure poverty, and what is the next step in poverty reduction for middle-income countries like India?

Just as a way of an example, it is difficult to argue that a family of five members with an income, of say, Rs 5,000 is poor and another with an income of Rs 5,200 is not. It appears certain that the focus should now shift to reducing inequality. Absolute poverty is an economic concept, but inequality is a sociological construct. On the development priority scale, reducing inequality should be accorded as much priority as clocking higher national income or GDP growth. In the final analysis, it would be foolhardy to ignore that yesterday’s luxuries are today’s necessities.

Source: Hindustan Times, 6-10-2015

Reclaiming `waste' food could feed 800m hungry around the world

Subodh Ghildiyal Ankara





Cereals and food products thrown away from fridges unused or from store shelves after the “sell-by“ date may feed the 800 million going hungry every day around the globe.The G20, in its bid to fix the problem of food losswastage, has found that “perfectly nutritious food“ was being wasted because it remained unsold on its “sell-by“ date or owing to the demanding specifications of food processors.It is felt this food can be “recovered and redistributed“ across many countries.
“The recovery and redistribution of such food is an initiative the G20 is seeking to encourage,“ a key G20 official said, indicating the issue may figure on top of suggest ions to curb food wastage.
Concern over rampant food deprivation co-existing with the luxury of surplus and quality-driven dumping tops the priority closer to a G20 commitment on curbing the menace at the Turkey summit in November.
The waste figures are staggering. As per findings available with the G20, fruits, vegetables, cereals and rootstubers account for 80% of the food lost or wasted. Crucially, 60% of roots-tubers available are wasted while 40% of fruits and vegetables, and 25% of cereals, go waste.
Perishable products run greater risk of being spoilt, largely owing to inadequate storage and transport facilities. Besides fruits and vegetables, 25% of fish and seafood is lost or wasted, while the figure stands at 20% for meat and dairy products.Overall, around 30% of total global food is thrown away .
Given the linkage between waste and hunger, a G20 technical platform will establish a common measurement system to estimate food loss.“Countries can use it to monitor the problem and the progress made in reducing it,“ the official said. The November summit may adopt the common formula being devised.
For the full report, log on to http:www.timesofindia.com

The measure of poverty

Estimates based on SECC and NSS data have different purposes.

y: C. Rangarajan and S. Mahendra Dev Recently, the government released data from the Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC) 2011. There has been comment that hereafter, we need not have consumption-based poverty estimates using NSS (National Sample Surveys) data. It is thought that SECC data will alone be enough to estimate poverty and deprivation. Here, we briefly examine the differences between the two and clarify that NSS consumption-based poverty estimates are still relevant. SECC-based estimates are important, but no substitutes for NSS-based poverty ratios. In India, we have a long history of studies on the measurement of poverty. The methodology for the estimation of poverty used by the erstwhile Planning Commission was based on recommendations made by various expert groups. In June 2012, the government of India appointed an expert group (with C. Rangarajan as chairman) to take a fresh look at the methodology for the measurement of poverty. The Rangarajan expert group has gone back to the idea of separate poverty line baskets for rural and urban areas, unlike the Tendulkar Committee, which took urban poverty as a given and used it as the common basket for rural and urban households. In defining the consumption basket separating the poor from the rest, the new expert group took the view that it should contain a food component that satisfied certain minimum nutrition requirements, as well as some normative level of consumption expenditure for essential non-food item groups (education, clothing, conveyance and house rent) besides a residual set of behaviourally determined non-food expenditure. The introduction of norms for certain kinds of non-food expenditures is an innovation. In the absence of any other normative criteria, the median fractile class expenditures were treated as the norm. Based on the analysis presented in the expert group report, monthly per capita consumption expenditure of Rs 972 in rural areas and Rs 1,407 in urban areas is treated as the poverty line at the all-India level. Assuming five members for a family, this will imply a monthly per household expenditure of Rs 4,860 in rural areas and Rs 7,035 in urban areas. The expert group estimates that 30.9 per cent of the rural population and 26.4 per cent of the urban population were below the poverty line in 2011-12. The all-India ratio was 29.5 per cent. Poverty estimates provide the proportion and size of the poor population and their spread across states and broad regions. - See more at: http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/the-measure-of-poverty/#sthash.mjur3JFn.dpuf

World Bank sets up commission on poverty

In order to measure and monitor poverty in the best way possible, the World Bank in Washington announced the setting up of a commission on global poverty on June 22. The commission will come up with a report by April 2016.

According to a press release of the World Bank, the new commission, made up of 24 leading international economists, will be chaired by Anthony Atkinson, a leading authority on the measurement of poverty and inequality and the centennial professor at the London School of Economics.

The commission has been formed against the backdrop of the upcoming post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the foremost target of which is to eradicate extreme poverty everywhere.

In 2013, the World Bank group announced two goals that would guide its development work worldwide. The first goal was to reduce the number of “extremely poor people” of the world to below 3 per cent by 2030. Extremely poor people are characterised as those who survive on less than $1.25 a day.

The second goal was to boost “shared prosperity”. Shared prosperity is defined as promoting the growth of per capita real income of the poorest 40 per cent population in each country. 
 
Announcing the new advisory body, the World Bank’s chief economist, Kaushik Basu, said he expects the commission to also provide advice on how to adjust the measurement of extreme poverty as and when new Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) and other price and exchange rate data become available.

PPP calculations allow economists to compare different global exchange rates to assess household consumption and real income in US dollars, since nominal exchange rates do not accurately capture differences in costs of living across countries.

“We want to hold the yardstick constant for measuring extreme poverty till 2030, our target year for bringing extreme and chronic poverty to an end,” said Basu, who will travel to Europe this week for the commission’s inaugural meeting.

Indicators and data collated and made available by the World Bank shape opinion and policies globally.

On the record: ‘Poverty is a cognitive tax, it depletes our resources’

Policymakers needn’t throw everything they’ve learned out of the window — usually, when prices go up, people demand less of a product; we’re not arguing with that.

Written by Varun Gauri | Updated: June 22, 2015 12:27 am

The World Development Report 2015, ‘Mind, Society and Behaviour’, argues for policymakers to take a more realistic view of how people think and behave. The lead author of the report, VARUN GAURI, spoke to Parth Phiroze Mehrotra about how these insights can help arrive at small tweaks in policy that could generate big results:

The assertions that people are not individual maximisers, that they have cognitive blindspots, that they value social reputations, seem to upend traditional economic assumptions. Do economists have to go back to the drawing board?

In the traditional approach to economics, people are computers that can process all available information. They make decisions by and for themselves. What we say is that people actually think automatically much of the time, they think socially — other people are factors in their preferences — and they also have mental models that filter information. In the report, we focus on areas where policy interventions can reduce poverty in important ways. There may be other ways in which people are not maximising in the broader markets. Policymakers needn’t throw everything they’ve learned out of the window — usually, when prices go up, people demand less of a product; we’re not arguing with that. But these findings may affect some of our elasticities. The evidence now is fairly strong that people have cognitive limitations that lead them not to process all the available information. Poor people in particular suffer from a lot of cognitive constraints. And even you and I typically think automatically.

The report points out that because the cognitive limitations on poor people might be greater, changing the time at which they have to make a decision, say about schooling, to when they have more “bandwidth”, like post-harvest, might actually help them make better decisions. It sounds almost too good to be true.

This could be a cost-effective way to influence outcomes. A lot of pioneering work on this is by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir. They developed the idea of a “scarcity mindset”. The key finding is that poverty is a cognitive tax; it depletes our resources. We can “induce poverty” even in you and me — if we’re playing a videogame and make decisions quickly, we’ll act as if we’re poor, we’d be focused on the short term. The policy implication is that people should be supported when they make decisions. That could take the form of resources transferred at the time of decision-making or actual people, social workers, helping individuals to take decisions. Or it could take the form of simplification. Too many programmes are too complicated to sign up for — that itself is a cognitive tax. In Tangier, there was a credit for a water hook-up, but only 10 per cent signed up for it. When researchers went to people’s houses, they realised that people had the documentation, they just didn’t get around to signing up. After that intervention, the sign-up rate went up to 69 per cent. The hassle factor can be huge.

INDIA TOPS WORLD HUNGER LIST WITH 194 MN PEOPLE: UN REPORT

NEW DELHI India is home to the highest number of hungry people in the world, at 194 million, surpassing China, according to United Nations annual hunger report.

At the global level, the corresponding figure dropped to 795 million in 2014-15, from 1 billion in 1990-92, with East Asia led by China accounting for most of the reductions, UN body Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said in its report titled 'The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2015'.

May 28 2015 : The Times of India (Delhi)

About 200m fewer hungry people than in 1990: UN

Rick Gladstone

NYT NEWS SERVIC





The number of hungry people globally has de clined from about one billion 25 years ago to about 795 million today, or about one person out of every nine, despite a surge in population growth, the United Nations reported on Wednesday .In developing regions, the number of hungry people has fallen to 780 million today , or 12.9% of the population, from 991 million 25 years ago, or 23.3% of the population at the time, according to the United Nations' annual hunger report, published by the Food and Agriculture Organization, the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the World Food Program.
Despite the finding that nearly 800 million people in the world remain hungry , the report described the progress made as a significant achievement. It said that 72 of the 129 nations monitored by the Food and Agriculture Organization had achieved the target under the so-called Millennium Development Goals of halving the percentages of hungry people in their populations and that developing regions had missed the target by only a small margin.
The Millennium Development Goals are a set of eight international objectives, including hunger eradication, established by the UN in 2000.“The near-achievement of the MDG hunger targets shows us that we can indeed eliminate the scourge of hunger in our lifetime,“ said José Graziano da Silva, the director general of the Food and Agriculture Organization, in announcing the report, “The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2015.“ The report attributed the hunger reduction in part to stable political conditions and economic growth in many of the countries that had met the target.
Progress was most pronounced in East Asia, Southeast and Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.But the report also illustrated failures, especially in parts of Africa, where in some regions more than one in three people remain hungry .

8% GDP growth helped reduce poverty: UN report

United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) has said the 8 per cent GDP growth in India from 2004 to 2011 led to a sharp decline in poverty from 41.6 per cent to 32.7 per cent and achieved the first Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set for 2015 of reducing poverty by half.

In a report — India and the MDGs — UN ESCAP said other MDGs achieved include gender parity in primary school enrolment, maternal mortality reduction by three-fourths and control of spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. India also achieved MDGs related to increased forest cover, halved the proportion of population without access to drinking water.

The MDGs that India has missed are universal primary school enrolment and completion and universal youth literacy by 2015, empowering women through wage employment and political participation, reducing child and infant mortality and improving access to adequate sanitation to open defecation, the report says.

“Over 270 million people in India in 2012 still remained trapped in extreme poverty making the post-2015 goal of eliminating extreme poverty by 2030 challenging, but feasible.”

UN under-secretary general and executive secretary of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia Shamshad Akhtar said at the release of the report: “Over the years, the MDGs have pushed governments around the world to mainstream poverty reduction, gender parity, education and health and such basic needs as water and sanitation in their development agenda.”

Keywords: Poverty, Millennium Development Goals

Odds of escaping poverty in India, U.S. same: World Bank

A World Bank report has challenged the conventional understanding of India’s inequality. The report, “Addressing inequality in South Asia,” has found that the probability of a poor person moving out of poverty in India in 2014 was as good as that in the U.S.

“There is good news — India is no longer the land of extremes and there are some bright spots,” said Martin Rama, one of the authors of the report and World Bank Chief Economist for South Asia.

The report has found that sons from Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe households are no longer stuck in the jobs done by their fathers. Across generations, mobility of occupational profiles among Muslims has been similar to that of higher caste Hindus, whereas mobility among Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes has become higher than that of upper caste Hindus over time.

The report shows that one of the main drivers of upward mobility is the increase in number of non-farm jobs in rural India.

Urbanisation reducing inequality: World Bank report

A World Bank report has found that between 2004-05 and 2009-10, 15 per cent of India’s population, or 40 per cent of the poor, moved above the poverty line. In the same period, a sizeable portion of the poor and the vulnerable — over 9 per cent of the total population or about 11 per cent of the poor and vulnerable — moved into the middle class.

However, over 9 per cent of the total population, or about 14 per cent of the non-poor group, slipped back into poverty, revealing the greater risks faced by the vulnerable and even the middle class than in other countries, the report, “Addressing inequality in South Asia,” said.

The third finding of the report that challenges the conventional understanding of inequality in India, said Onno Ruhl, World Bank Country Director in India, is that urbanisation is reducing inequality, not increasing it.

Mr. Ruhl said the policy takeaways from the report for Prime Minister Narendra Modi included “strive for universal health and sanitation; leverage the opportunity for urbanisation; and create jobs for all and build skills not just through technical training but also with servicing the population with primary and secondary education and nutrition.”

Keywords: World Bank report, poverty alleviation, World Bank Chief Economist for South Asia, Martin Rama, Make in India

Jul 17 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)

1/3rd of world's extreme poor in India: UN study

Himanshi.Dhawan@timesgroup.com

New Delhi





India is home to the largest number of poor with one-third of the world's 1.2 billion extreme poor living here. It also had the highest number of under-five deaths in the world in 2012, with 1.4 million children dying before reaching their fifth birthday , according to the UN Millennium Development Goals report 2014.Poverty rates in Southern Asia fell from 51% in 1990 to 30% two decades later with China leading the way . Extreme poverty in China came down from 60% in 1990 to 16% in 2005 and 12% in 2010.
In India, poverty reduction was sluggish in comparison coming down from 49.4% in 1994 to 42% in 2005 and 32.7% in 2010. Two-thirds of the extreme poor (those who lived on income less than $ 1 a day) live in India, China, Nigeria, Bangladesh and Congo.
Minority affairs minister Najma Heptulla said the report's findings present a challenge to the Modi government and that it would be able to surmount it. “Good days will come,“ she said. “We don't have to be proud of what we have done. Poverty is the biggest challenge... I am sure when the next report comes, we will have done much better,“ she said, stressing on the PM's commitment to poverty elimination and his mantra of “sabka saath sabka vikas (Development with all, for all)“. According to the report, almost 60% of people who defecate in open reside in India, which also accounts for 17% of global maternal deaths.
South Asia, of which India is the largest and most populous country , has fared worse than other Asian regions on most counts. The region has, however, done well in school enrolment.
UN resident coordinator Lise Grande said the Millennium Development Goals can't be met globally if they're not reached in India.