Friday, March 19, 2021

India's middle income earners falls

 Further to this earlier post the number of Indians in the middle class or middle income, those earning between $10 and $20 a day, shrank by about 32 million, compared with the number that could have been reached in the absence of a pandemic.

A year into the pandemic, the numbers of those in the 'middle class' has shrunk to 66 million, down a third from a pre-pandemic estimate of 99 million, it added.

“India is estimated to have seen a greater decrease in the middle class and a much sharper rise in poverty than China in the COVID-19 downturn,” the Pew Research Centre said.

 Pew estimated the number of poor people, with incomes of $2 or less each day, has gone up by 75 million as the recession brought by the virus clawed back years of progress. A rise of nearly 10 percent in domestic fuel prices this year, job losses and salary cuts have further hurt millions of households, forcing many people to seek jobs overseas.

COVID pushed 32 million Indians out of middle class: Pew research | Coronavirus pandemic News | Al Jazeera

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