Giving Compass' Take:

• Pramit Bhattacharya and Sriharsha Devulapalli at IDR report on an analysis of data which suggests that while urban poverty has been falling, rural poverty has risen sharply in India.

• How can funders help lift people out of poverty? What policies led to improvements in poverty rates without addressing education and violence? 

• Here's an article on rethinking global poverty reduction in 2019. 

Ever since India moved to a high growth trajectory in the 1980s, poverty rates have consistently declined over time. Until now.

A Mint analysis of the consumption expenditure numbers reported by the National Statistical Office (NSO) in a hushed-up report suggests that rural poverty rose nearly 4 percentage points between 2011-12 and 2017-18 to 30 percent even as urban poverty fell 5 percentage points over the same period to 9 percent. Given the higher weight of the rural population, the estimated overall poverty rate went up nearly a percentage point to 23 percent in 2017-18. The rise implies that 30 million people fell below India’s official poverty line and joined the ranks of the poor over the past six years.

“The slight rise in overall poverty rates at the national level masks significant inter-state disparities.”

The analysis is based on a couple of simplifying assumptions (more below) and should only be treated as rough estimates of poverty in India. Yet, the broad conclusions as well as the key trends are unlikely to change regardless of the methodological tweaks used to arrive at the poverty figures.

Read the full article about the rise of rural poverty in India by Pramit Bhattacharya and Sriharsha Devulapalli at India Development Review (IDR).