Aspects of poverty in Rural India

Abstract

Much of the earlier work on poverty in Rural India has been exclusively concerned with a limited measure of poverty—the number of people below a poverty line usually specified in terms of per capita expenditure. An attempt is made here to provide a mapping of poverty using actual income/expenditure as well as alternative measures of income which ‘standardize’ actual income/expenditure for differences in household composition. A comprehensive index of poverty—the Sen-index which combines aspects of both ‘absolute’ and ‘relative’ deprivation—is computed for temporal comparisons. A profile of the poor focusing on their household characteristics is presented to serve as a basis for understanding some of the underlying causal mechanisms of poverty. Finally, some results are presented to illustrate (1) that poverty is virtually a permanent condition for the bulk of the poor; and (2) that large groups of households—especially those with a high dependency burden—sink to abysmally low levels of living.