It has been a wait for 11 long years. One of the most important parameters about developments and progress in a large democratic country like India is the trend in absolute poverty. The government has just released a Fact Sheet pertaining to the Household Expenditure Survey (HES) for the 2022-23 agricultural year (actually August 2022-July 2023; https://www.mospi.gov.in/publication/factsheet-household-consumption-expenditure-survey-hces2022-23). The full report is to be released shortly, as well as the unit-level data.

Fortunately, the Fact Sheet has enough information to derive an estimate of poverty for a given poverty line. A poverty line is a level of per capita expenditure below which a person is deemed poor. The World Bank is the “official” repository of poverty data for all the countries in the world and regularly updates information on all official surveys of consumer expenditure, as well as some private surveys (https://pip.worldbank.org).

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