India's support to the poor and needy during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis is remarkable, and other nations should adopt the Indian move of targeted cash transfer instead of broad subsidies, World Bank president David Malpass said on Wednesday, October 5, 2022.
COVID-19 marked the end of a phase of global progress in poverty reduction. During the three decades that preceded its arrival, more than 1 billion people escaped extreme poverty. The incomes of the poorest nations gained ground, Mr. Malpass said in the forward to a study ¬ Poverty and Shared Prosperity Report ¬ released by the World Bank.
The poorest people bore the steepest costs of the pandemic ¬ income losses averaged four per cent for the poorest 40 per cent, double the losses of the wealthiest 20 per cent of the income distribution. Global inequality rose, as a result, for the first time in decades, as per the report.
