Poverty alleviation and economic reforms in India

Abstract

The article first surveys the debate about poverty measurement and recent poverty alleviation in India by focusing on the main contributions. The question of whether the economic reforms of the 1990s have accelerated or delayed poverty reduction, or possibly contributed to increased poverty, is addressed by using the state-level computations of the Human Development Index (HDI). It is shown that the HDI of the leading and lagging states converge and that the convergence accelerated in the 1990s. A functional relationship between the poverty index and the HDI is established and used to project the debated end-of-1990s poverty head count. The result confirms a slow-down in poverty reduction in the post-reform period.