World Bank estimates 12 million Indians can move to extreme poverty due to COVID-19

The Covid-19 pandemic could push 49 million people, including 12 million Indians, across the world into extreme poverty, estimates a projection by researchers from the Development Data Group of the World Bank. Extreme poverty is defined as living on less than $1.90 a day.

The data blog published by the World Bank which contains these worrying figures says that the majority of these people - about 23 million - are projected to be in Sub-Saharan Africa and 16 million in South Asia. It forecasts that the global share of world population under extreme poverty “is projected to increase from 8.2 per cent in 2019 to 8.6 per cent in 2020, or from 632 million people to 665



million people”.

The earlier World Economic Outlook from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had forecast a decline in global population living in poverty from 8.1 per cent to 7.8 per cent in 2020, but this was before the global outbreak of Covid-19. The IMF now estimates advanced economies to contract by around 6 per cent in 2020, while emerging markets and developing economies are expected to contract by 1 per cent.

The World Bank, however, estimates that “more people living close to the international poverty line the developing world in low and middle income countries will suffer the greatest consequences in terms of extreme poverty”.