South Asia has been accommodating a signicantly large share of global income and multidimensional poor compared to other regions. The multidimensional poor refers to individuals who are deprived of more than one dimension such as health, education and living standards. During the last decade, the share of income poor in South Asia has increased, despite the share of multidimensionally poor showing only a marginal decline. Poverty reduction achievements in Sri Lanka have been remarkable during the last two decades and therefore Sri Lanka accounts for South Asia’s lowest poverty incidence in terms of both income and multidimensional poverty. The analysis based on international income poverty line of 1.90 USD (2011 PPP) per day and the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) developed by Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative (OPHI).

According to studies such as Bourguignon & Morrison (2002), the global poverty rate dramatically dropped from 94% (1820) to 10.7% (2013) during the last two centuries. However, South Asia’s share of global poor has increased from 27.3% to 33.4% during the period of 1990-2013,leaving behind only to Sub-Saharan Africa which accounts for the largest share (50.7%) of global poor. Despite South Asia’s share of global poor having increased, the number of poor people living in South Asia actually fell by 248.8 million during 1990-2013. The guru 01 illustrates region wise poverty reduction along with world’s average poverty headcount index during the period of 1990-2013.

According to the latest available data, 21.2% of the Indian population is living below the international poverty line of 1.90 US$. In fact, 270 million are considered poor, making India the poorest country in the region followed by Bangladesh where 18.5% of population is below the poverty line. The headcount indices of Nepal, Pakistan and Maldives are 15.0%, 6.1% and 7.3% respectively. In contrast, Sri Lanka has the lowest headcount index (1.9%) while Bhutan reported the second lowest (2.2%) in South Asian region.