Markets lifted millions out of poverty in India

See India’s Economy Isn’t the New China (Yet) by Sadanand Dhume of The WSJ. Excerpt:

"At a conference on the Indian economy at George Washington University last month, Oxford economist Sabina Alkire estimated that 415 million people in India exited poverty between 2005 and 2021. In 2015-16, 27.7% of Indians were poor, according to the United Nations Development Program’s Multidimensional Poverty Index, which measures health, education and living standards. By 2019-21 this had fallen to 16.4% of the population.

The World Bank takes an even more optimistic view of poverty reduction, estimating that in 2021, despite the pandemic, only 12.9% of India’s population was living on $2.15 or less a day, the global benchmark for extreme poverty. Indian economists Surjit Bhalla and Karan Bhasin wrote this year that “India has eliminated extreme poverty.” Regardless of whom you believe, there’s no doubt that the extreme deprivation with which India was once synonymous has diminished greatly and is on track to disappear entirely."