Issues in Chronic Poverty: Panel Data Based Analysis

2003

2009

India experienced high economic growth in the 1990s. Some earlier studies, which attempted to identify the influence of growth on poverty dynamics in the country by including growth variables among the factors affecting the incidence of and transition from poverty, concluded that growth is not uniformly associated with poverty reduction. While panel household data was used to identify the factors influencing the incidence and mobility of poverty, the changes in the influence of these factors over time were not analysed. This paper examines whether there has been change in the influence of factors such as village level infrastructure, household size and composition, and economic growth on poverty dynamics in different periods of time. The impact of a number of factors changes over time implying that the strategies for poverty reduction would have to take into account the changing economic environment. The paper further presents an analysis of the pattern of per capita expenditure over time for the same set households in order to analyse the implications of these trends on poverty reduction.

Social Science Research Network, 2009

India experienced high economic growth in the 1990s. Some earlier studies, which attempted to identify the influence of growth on poverty dynamics in the country by including growth variables among the factors affecting the incidence of and transition from poverty, concluded that growth is not uniformly associated with poverty reduction. While panel household data was used to identify the factors influencing the incidence and mobility of poverty, the changes in the influence of these factors over time were not analysed. This paper examines whether there has been change in the influence of factors such as village level infrastructure, household size and composition, and economic growth on poverty dynamics in different periods of time. The impact of a number of factors changes over time implying that the strategies for poverty reduction would have to take into account the changing economic environment. The paper further presents an analysis of the pattern of per capita expenditure over time for the same set households in order to analyse the implications of these trends on poverty reduction.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2010

The chronically poor are generally identified using longitudinal household panel data on income or expenditure. The basic motivation for our approach is to overcome the absence of a nationally representative panel data in analysing chronic poverty issues. A household is identified as chronically poor if its income is below the poverty line and if its children are suffering from malnutrition for a longer period of time. Making use of a set of common variables available in two nationally representative surveys (that deal with the estimation of consumer expenditure and malnutrition), the incidence of chronic poverty is estimated among the different social groups and across the various states of India. The paper aims to improve our understanding of the determinants of chronic poverty by considering economic, demographic and social factors. It attempts to answer specific questions such as: how important is household income as a determinant of chronic poverty? What factors inhibit escape from chronic poverty? How different are the 'other poor' from the chronically poor? Demographic pressure, low wage rates for households offering labour in rural and urban areas, low household income, and social factors all have a significant impact on chronic poverty. Chronically poor households tend to be concentrated at the lower end of family lifecycle. The 'other' poor households may be able to move out of chronic poverty because of their small household size, as well as the more intensive use of labour, including child labour. While the wage rates of labour households do not show much difference between the chronic and other poor households, they are substantially higher for non-poor households. Hence, a higher wage rate is of paramount importance in lifting labour households from poverty. Improvement in household income is crucial for reducing the incidence of both chronic poverty and other poverty. A 10 percent increase in the per capita expenditure of chronically poor households would lift about one-third of these families from chronic poverty and onesixth of them from poverty. Roughly, a 60 percent increase in per capita expenditure would be required to lift all chronically poor households from poverty. This would be a stupendous task, considering the fact that in the 1990s per capita expenditure of the bottom 30 percent increased at 1.5 percent per annum.

Indian Economic Review, 2019

Economic and Political Weekly, 2010

This paper examines the incidence and dynamics of poverty over a period of three decades from 1970 to the end of the 1990s. We use a national rural panel household data set, based on household surveys conducted by the National Council of Applied Economic Research in three rounds in 1970, 1981 and 1998. It examines the trends in the incidence of poverty in India from a longitudinal perspective. The study corroborates the view that the period of 1990s experienced a slower decline in poverty compared to the previous decade, although the incidence of chronic poverty declined even in the latter period. It also examines the pattern of growth in consumption expenditure to understand how it tracks trends in poverty.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2005

2000

Discussion …, 2010