Since early 1999, there have been indications that poverty has declined significantly as rice prices have fallen, and real wages are starting to recover. In Vietnam , the incidence of poverty, as defined on the basis of the national poverty line, dropped from 58 percent in 1993 to 37 percent in 1998. The big gains for poverty reduction came from but were not limited to growth of per capita expenditures, stimulated by agricultural diversification and economic growth. In South Asia , the share of the population living in poverty declined moderately through the 1990s, but not sufficiently to reduce the absolute number of poor. Household survey data indicate limited growth in average consumption in rural areas, reflecting slow growth in agriculture.
Urban poverty appears to have declined at twice the rate of poverty in rural areas.
However, poverty data in India are subject to considerable uncertainty. In particular, private consumption as measured in the national accounts has grown about three times faster over the 1990s than household consumption as measured by the National Sample Survey. Discrepancies are to be expected, as the two sources track different aggregates. Moreover, the survey data tends to understate the consumption of higher-income households. Nevertheless, the size of this difference and the slowness of poverty reduction revealed in the survey data are difficult to account for, particularly given the improvement in human development indicators.