Change in Population Living in Slums

Despite progress made over the last decade, 64% of urban dweller in low income countries and 44% in lower middle income countries continued to live in slums in 2020. The effort to get more people out of informal settlements is among other factors hindered by some countries where the share of the urban population living in slums has been increasing due to economic and other crisis situations. These were, for example, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan and Myanmar.

According to World Bank data, 49% of India's urban population lived in slums in 2020, down from 55% in 2002. The decrease in informal urban residents in the country is therefore below the average decrease for lower middle income nations of 9 percentage points. Other lower middle income countries like Nigeria and Pakistan were ahead of that curve, but had gotten just as far or not quite as far as India in reducing the share of slum dwellers. Intervention like those carried out by the Indian government are not believed to reduce the number of slums long terms, as people driven from their homes will be forced to set up somewhere else unless their poverty is actually meaningfully reduced.