India has highest number of persons living in poverty: UN report

A total of 234 million persons are living below the poverty line in India, the highest in the world, according to a report released by the United Nations Development Programme and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative.

Released on Thursday, the 2024 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index report used the most recent comparable data available for 112 countries – 21 low-income countries, 47 lower-middle-income countries, 40 upper-middle-income countries and four high-income countries.

Multidimensional poverty was measured by constructing a deprivation profile for each household and person in it covering 10 indicators of health, education and standard of living.

Across 112 countries and 6.3 billion people, 1.1 billion persons, or 18.3% of the total, live in acute multidimensional poverty. Over half of those living in poverty are children.

In Pakistan, 93 million people are living below the poverty line, while the number is 86 million for Ethiopia, 73 million for Nigeria and 66 million for the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Together with India, these five countries account for nearly half, or 48.1% of the 1.1 billion living in poverty.

The report showed that nearly half the world's poor live in Sub-Saharan Africa (553 million) and over a third in South Asia (402 million).

It also pointed out that nearly 40%, or 455...

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