Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

Show NLP summaries collection recirc on article pages

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

Middle East conflict live updates: U.N. says roads ‘jammed’ as more than 110,000 flee Rafah; cease-fire talks stall

Biden’s weapons sales to Israel breach legal limits, former officials say     

China’s Xi wades into Europe’s political divides

Find your Westminster show dog name: You may be a CH Lolly’s Marble Tuxedo MX

What actually happens within your lawn when you don’t mow it

Kanter on the DOJ’s new healthcare task force

Photos of his mom at lunch are a balm people didn’t know they needed

Dog hit by car loses leg, is adopted by firefighter who helped her

Postal worker finds WWII-era letters, drives 5 hours to deliver them

The case for eating at Italian gas stations

5 big travel lessons from a Patagonia CEO-turned-conservationist

Cruise ship drags dead whale into New York, prompting investigation

Are smartphones destroying childhood? It’s complicated.

In the campaign against Donald Trump, do the ends justify the means?

The FTC’s noncompete clause rule goes too far

How Trump’s allies amplify his Truth Social messages to the wider world

In Arizona, election workers trained with deepfakes to prepare for 2024

Indy Star bars columnist from Caitlin Clark’s games after awkward exchange

Ask Amy: Man doesn’t want cancer to define him

Carolyn Hax: In-laws stalk the live stream to check couple’s attendance at church

Miss Manners: Why were other diners laughing at us?

Apple apologizes for iPad ad after blowback 

Google’s new ‘Find My’ device network is useful but a stalking risk

Hack targeting hospital chain Ascension is impacting patient care

To get outs with his fastball, Trevor Williams put his ego aside

Vegetables star at Mita, where you get taste after taste (after taste)

Jayden Daniels will learn about NFL policies after $10,000 bet with Malik Nabers

Paul Manafort, poised to rejoin Trump world, aided Chinese media deal

Trump might not go to jail, but this trial is a close second

Trump team throws out GOP plan and builds a ‘leaner’ 2024 operation 

5 myths about Social Security as the program faces a funding crisis

Social Security has to be fixed. But you still need your own savings.

An I bond is now at 4.28 percent. Are they still a good deal?

US-POLITICS-BIDEN

It is a distinction that no country wants: the place with the most people living in extreme poverty.

For decades, India remained stubbornly in the top spot, a reflection of its huge population and its enduring struggle against poverty.

Now, <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2018/06/19/the-start-of-a-new-poverty-narrative/">new estimates indicate that Nigeria has knocked India</a> out of that position, part of a profound shift taking place in the geography of the world’s poorest people.

According to a recent report from the Brookings Institution, Nigeria overtook India in May to become the country with the world’s highest number of people living in extreme poverty, which is defined as living on less than $1.90 a day. The threshold captures those who struggle to obtain even basic necessities such as food, shelter and clothing, and takes into account differences in purchasing power between countries.

The Brookings report was based on estimates generated by the <a href="https://worldpoverty.io/index.html">World Poverty Clock</a>, a model created to track progress against poverty in real time. As of Monday, its figures showed that India had 70.6 million people living in extreme poverty, while Nigeria had 87 million.

What’s more, the gap is widening: The number of people living in extreme poverty in India is falling while the opposite is true in Nigeria, where the population is growing faster than its economy. Extreme poverty rises in Nigeria by six people each minute, according to calculations by the World Poverty Clock. Meanwhile, the number of extreme poor in India drops by 44 people a minute.

“It’s a good news story for India, coupled with some caveats, and it’s a real wake-up call for the African continent,” said Homi Kharas, director of the global economy and development program at the Brookings Institution.

Extreme poverty is increasingly an African phenomenon, the Brookings report noted. Africans make up about two-thirds of the world’s extreme poor, it said. By 2030, that figure could rise to nine-tenths if current trends continue.

Africa’s central place in the battle against poverty comes amid dramatic progress worldwide. Since 1990, the number of people living in extreme poverty has fallen more than 60 percent, according to the World Bank. Much of the reduction has come in Asia, first in places such as China, Indonesia and Vietnam, and more recently in India, which appears to have made striking achievements in recent years.

India, with its population of 1.3 billion people, now has 5 percent of its population living in extreme poverty, according to the World Poverty Clock (in Nigeria, where the overall population is about 191 million, the rate of extreme poverty is much higher: 44 percent are extremely poor).

In a post  Monday, World Poverty Clock researchers raised the tantalizing prospect that by 2021, <a href="http://worldpoverty.io/blog/index.php?r=14">fewer than 3 percent of India’s population will live in extreme poverty</a>, a benchmark viewed by some development economists as “a watershed moment.”

For many in India, such talk is sure to provoke sharp debate. Tens of millions of people remain destitute and <a href="https://scroll.in/article/881265/india-has-not-published-data-on-farmer-suicides-for-the-last-two-years">thousands of farmers commit suicide</a> each year. <a href="http://rchiips.org/NFHS/NFHS-4Reports/India.pdf">Nearly 40 percent of Indian children under 5 are short for their age</a>, a sign of chronic undernutrition.

“The claims that India is on the verge of <a href="https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/TmdVu3hYfU1PizyEjUlrYI/Is-India-winning-the-battle-against-extreme-poverty.html">winning the battle against extreme poverty</a> sit uneasily with the current concerns about job creation or rural distress,” said an editorial last week in Mint, a financial newspaper in India.

Part of the disconnect may be the result of how poverty is defined. The extreme poverty threshold is an absolute measure used for international comparison. Last year, however, the World Bank added another benchmark that aims to capture a sense of relative poverty. For “lower middle income” countries like India, it set the line at people who live on $3.20 day. By that measure, a third of Indians are poor, economist Surjit Bhalla estimated <a href="https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/india-is-middle-income-now-raise-the-poverty-line-5239269/">in a recent article</a>.

More clarity could be only months away. In June, the Indian government completed a national survey which is conducted once every five years and provides the best available data on poverty. In the past, the results have been released anywhere from several months to a year after finishing the survey. Bhalla, an economist who also serves as a part-time adviser to the Indian government, believes that the country’s own data could show it made even more progress reducing poverty than the estimates produced by Brookings and the World Poverty Clock.

Daniel Pearl Award for Outstanding Coverage of South Asia, South Asian Journalists Association Awards, 2022

Member of "The Pegasus Project" team, George Polk Awards, 2021

Winner, South Asian Journalists Association Awards, 2021

Ramnath Goenka Award for Foreign Correspondent Covering India, 2021 and 2020

Journalist of the Year, Canadian National Newspaper Awards, 2015

Winner, International coverage, Canadian National Newspaper Awards, 2015

Young Journalist Award, Society of Publishers in Asia, 1998

Smith College, BA 

Columbia University, MA in International Affairs and MS in Journalism

Joanna Slater is a national correspondent for The Washington Post focusing on the Northeast. Previously she served as the India bureau chief based in New Delhi. Prior to joining The Post, she was a foreign correspondent for the Globe & Mail and a reporter at the Wall Street Journal. Her postings include assignments in Mumbai, Hong Kong and Berlin. 

Joanna Slater

The Washington Post

War In Ukraine

Africa

Americas

Asia

Europe

Middle East

World

prism://prism.query/site-articles-only,/world/&limit=20

The Washington Post World section provides information and analysis of breaking world news stories. In addition to our world news and video, Post World News offers discussions and blogs on major international news and economic issues.