Fewer People Live in Slums But Progress Is Slow

Despite progress made over the last decade, 64 percent of urban dweller in low income countries and 44 percent 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.

A country in the news for its treatment of informal settlers this week is India, which has been bulldozing slums ahead of the G20 summit it is hosting in capital New Delhi this weekend. CNN reports that dwellings were cleared around the city's convention center where the event is taking place. Earlier in the year, the government had removed the homes of around 100,000 people by razing an informal settlement next to one of Delhi's major sights. Residents from both affected areas said they had lived in their informal homes for decades.

According to World Bank data, 49 percent of India's urban population lived in slums in 2020, down from 55 percent 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. Interventions 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.