In the last three years of Modi government, India’s has witnessed dramatic decline in extreme poverty, according to report by leading U.S think tank Brookings Institute. The report is based on the measurement carried out by World Poverty Clock.

The number of people living in extreme poverty in India has seen a massive reduction from 12.5 crore in 2016 to 5 crore in 2019. During the same period, the the world has seen about 8.3 crore people escape extreme poverty.

According to the study, India is no longer the country with the largest number of poor people.

Funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany and created by the Vienna-based NGO called the World Data Lab, World Poverty Clock is based on a global standardized database on income which provides real-time projections on income levels for every individual in the world.

The World Poverty Clock tool shows the number of people living in extreme poverty worldwide. The clock determines the gap between the actual number who have escaped poverty since end-December 2015 and the hypothetical number who should have escaped in order for the world to be on-track to reach the global target of ending poverty by 2030.

The World Poverty Clock uses publicly available data on income distribution, production, and consumption, provided by various international organizations, most notably the UN, WorldBank, and the International Monetary Fund . These organizations compile data provided to them by governments in each country.

In a few cases, governments fail to provide data, it uses models to estimate poverty in these countries, covering 99.7% of the world’s population. It also models how individual incomes might change over time, using IMF growth forecasts for the medium-term complemented by long-term “shared socio-economic pathways” developed by the Institute of International Applied Systems Analysis near Vienna, Austria, and similar analysis developed by the OECD.

The key findings of the study

1. Extreme Poverty In Today’s World Is Largely About Africa