Key Highlights

Poverty

• Decline in Extreme Poverty (living on less than $2.15 per day in PPP terms): Declined from 16% (2011–12) to just 2.3% (2022–23), lifting around 171 million people above global poverty line.
• Rural-Urban Gap: Narrowed from 7.7 to 1.7 %. 
• Multidimensional Poverty: Non-monetary poverty (measured by Multidimensional Poverty Index) declined from 53.8 % (2005-06) to 16.4 % (2019-21).
• 5 Most Populous states: Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar, West Bengal, & Madhya Pradesh account for 54 % of India’s extremely poor (2022-23) & 51 % of the multidimensionally poor (2019-21).

Inequality 

• Income Inequality: India’s consumption-based Gini index improved from 28.8 (2011-12) to 25.5 (2022-23). However, income inequality increased from a Gini of 52 (2004) to 62 (2023) (World Inequality Database). 
  • Gini index/coefficient is a measure of income inequality.
• Wage Disparity: Median earnings of the top 10 % are 13 times higher than the bottom 10 % (2023-24).

Employment

• Rising Employment: Employment rates, especially among women, are rising, & urban unemployment also fell to the lowest since 2017-18.
• Informal Jobs: Only 23 % of non-farm paid jobs are formal. 
• Gender Disparities: Despite a female employment rate of 31 %, gender disparities remain, with 234 million more men in paid work.