The World Bank recently updated its global poverty line, which is now re-estimated at $1.90 a day, up from $1.25 a day earlier. Accordingly, poverty estimates for all countries have been revised, mostly downward.
Nepal’s absolute poverty at $1.90 a day stood at 14.9% in 2010, a sharp decrease from 47.1% in 2003 and 61.7% in 1995. Compare this with the estimate based on $1.25 a day (2005 PPP): in 2010 absolute poverty stood at 23.7%, also sharply down from 53.1% in 2003 and 68.0% in 1995. The new poverty benchmark shows a marginal acceleration in absolute poverty reduction, but overall not much difference in rate of decrease over the last two decades.
The estimates based on national poverty line, which is fixed at NRs 19,261 (NRs 11,929 for food items and NRs 7,332 for non-food items in 2011 prices) are the same. The estimates based on NLSS III data show that about 25.2% of the people lived below the national poverty line in 2010/11. Consumption basket was changed in this round of estimate, so it cannot be strictly compared to the previous estimates. See thisfor more and thisfor poverty by district. The major contributing factors for poverty reduction are remittance income (see hereand here), higher agricultural wages, urbanization (mostly propelled by rural-urban migration) and investment in public services (education and healthcare, financed mostly by donors) (see here). It has hardly anything to do with economic growth.
Poverty in South Asia
Now, lets look at how the other South Asian economies fare with the re-estimated global poverty estimate. India has the highest poverty rate (21.3%) in South Asia, followed by Nepal and Pakistan. Overall, all countries have managed to lower poverty save the Maldives.
Inequality in South Asia
Nepal lowered inequality (as measured by Gini index based on consumption) from 43.3 in 2003 to 32.8 in 2010. Similarly, Bangladesh, the Maldives and Pakistan have marginally also lowered inequality. The most progress is achieved by Nepal. Inequality seems to have increased in Bhutan, India and Sri Lanka.
Consumption share
The share in consumption of the lowest 40% of the population stood at 20.5% and the highest 40%’s share was 63.3% in Nepal in 2010. The share of consumption attributed to the lowest 40% has increased and the share of the highest 40% decreased during the last two living standard survey periods. India and Sri Lanka saw a marginal decline in the consumption share of the lowest 40% population.
Briefly about the re-estimated international poverty line
While the new poverty line is based on 2011 purchasing-power-parity (PPP), the earlier poverty line was based on 2005 PPP prices. The other methods of computing the poverty line remains the same (basically, the earlier global extreme poverty line was expressed in 2011 PPP values computed under the International Comparison Program in 2014).
The new global poverty line is computedby taking the average of national poverty lines of the 15 poorest countries (Chad, Ethiopia, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Nepal, Niger, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Tajikistan, Tanzania and Uganda) in 2011 and then converted into US dollars using 2011 PPP. So, starting October 2015 the new global extreme poverty line is $1.90 a day. About 987 million people globally (14.2% of global population) lived under this line in 2012 and it is projected to drop to around 700 million in 2015. More here and here.
A bit of timeline of the global poverty estimates:
- $1 a day created in 1991 used 1985 PPP
- Re-estimated to $1.08 a day using 1993 PPP
- Re-estimated to $1.25 a day using 2005 PPP
- Re-estimated to $1.90 a day (precisely $1.88 a day) using 2011 PPP
