Rural poverty and agricultural performance in India

Abstract

In earlier articles in this journal Ahluwalia and Saith came to opposite conclusions about the effect of agricultural growth on rural poverty in India. Our general model shows that the main reason for the difference in the conclusions is the different specification used for the estimating equation. Using the general model and the same data as Ahluwalia and Saith, we are able to verify Ahluwalia's result that agricultural growth reduces rural poverty; our analysis also supports Saith's conclusion that inflationary pressures increase rural poverty.