India ‘overtakes’ Nigeria as world’s poverty capital

India has surpassed Nigeria as the nation with the highest number of extremely poor people. The World Poverty Clock (WPC) said this in its recent update, considering the COVID-19 pandemic economic effect.

The World Poverty Clock is an online tool that monitors the progress against poverty globally and regionally and provides real-time poverty data across countries. According to its data, extremely poor people are those living on N800 per day (less than $2 per day).

In 2018, Nigeria held the position with about 87 million people in extreme poverty, compared with India’s 73 million.

According to the new data, about 83 million Indians have been plunged into extreme poverty in 2022, representing 6 percent of the country’s population which stands at 1.3 billion.

For Nigeria, WPC said 70 million people are living in extreme poverty, representing 33 percent of Nigeria’s over 200 million people. In 2020, the National Bureau Of Statistics (NBS) said more than 80 million Nigerians live in extreme poverty (on a dollar per day).