{"id":29834,"date":"2023-06-02T14:32:00","date_gmt":"2023-06-02T09:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/idronline.org\/?post_type=article&p=29834"},"modified":"2025-08-18T14:41:30","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T09:11:30","slug":"do-we-know-how-many-people-in-india-live-in-poverty","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/idronline.org\/kn-in\/article\/inequality\/do-we-know-how-many-people-in-india-live-in-poverty\/","title":{"rendered":"Do we know how many people in India live in poverty?"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are at least five estimates of the number of poor people in India, which put the number of poor in India between 34 million–equivalent to the population of Kerala<\/a>–to 373 million–more than four times the population of West Bengal<\/a>. This puts the number of the poor between 2.5% of the population to 29.5%, based on different estimates between 2014 and 2022.<\/p>

Economists have arrived at these estimates through various means, including projections of past data to private sources. One estimate<\/a> is based on an entirely different threshold for poverty, while another<\/a> uses unemployment data.<\/p>

Officially, there has been no update to India’s poverty estimates since 2011, when there were about 269 million<\/a> poor people in India (21.9% of the population), which was equivalent to 2.5 times the population of Bihar at that time. These estimates are based on data from the Household Consumption Expenditure Surveys<\/a>, typically carried out every five years. But India is missing two rounds of data.<\/p>

\"What<\/a><\/div>

Poverty numbers are important for gauging the economic progress of a country, and the government also needs these numbers to estimate the number of beneficiaries of schemes, such as the Public Distribution System<\/a> for food, meant for poverty alleviation.<\/p>

The official poverty line<\/h3>

Officially, a person who lives on a monthly expenditure of Rs 1,000 or less in cities and Rs 816 or less in villages, at 2011-12 prices is poor, per the poverty line<\/a> determined by an Expert Group (Tendulkar) in that year. This is the threshold used to determine poverty status in India. Those who live on or below the poverty line can avail of subsidised rations<\/a> (up to 35 kg for the poorest households) under the National Food Security Act, subsidised loans for construction of housing under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana<\/a> (Prime Minister’s housing scheme), Skill Training for Employment Promotion among Urban Poor (STEP-UP<\/a>), etc.<\/p>

Even people who live above the poverty line, especially those in urban areas, lack access to basic facilities.<\/p><\/blockquote>

Madhura Swaminathan, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata, had criticised<\/a> the poverty threshold at that time, for using a lower consumption of calories than required for a healthy diet, and considering very little expenditure on health and education. Even people who live above the poverty line, especially those in urban areas, lack access to basic facilities like housing, health and education, as IndiaSpend reported<\/a> in 2022.<\/p>

The Rangarajan Committee<\/a>, appointed by the United Progressive Alliance-II government, in 2014 suggested a different poverty threshold, using higher expenditures, and estimated the poor at slightly higher than the 2011 official estimate. But the findings of the committee were not accepted<\/a> by the government, and the official poverty line continues to be based on the 2011 numbers.<\/p>

The poverty lines<\/a> set by both expert groups are based on the expenditure required to purchase a minimum standard of living and includes the expenditure on health, education and housing. The source of consumption data are consumption surveys by the National Statistical Organisation from 2011-12.<\/p>

\"donate<\/a><\/div>
\"A<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/a>
There has been no official update to India’s poverty estimates since 2011. | Picture courtesy: PxHere<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>

Other estimates of poverty in India<\/h3>

Given the lack of recent consumption surveys, poverty estimates have tried using different methodologies on either public or private data.<\/p>

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