Advanced Search

Is India Better off Today than 15 Years ago? A Robust Multidimensional Answer

Contents:

Author Info

Abstract

This paper provides a robust normative evaluation of the spectacular growth episode that India has experienced in the last 15 years. Specifically, the paper compares the evolution, between 1998, 1996 and 2001 of the distribution of several important individual attributes on the basis of ethically robust dominance criteria. The individual attributes considered are real consumptions (measured at the individual level), literacy rate, infant mortality and violent crime rates (all measured at the district levels). District level variables are interpreted as (local) public goods which, along with consumption, are assumed to contribute to individual well being. The robust criteria used are generalizations, to more than two attributes, of the first and the second order dominance criteria of Atkinson and Bourguignon (1982) and are known to correspond to the unanimity of utilitarian value judgements taken over a specific class of individual utility functions. The main result of the empirical analysis is that all utilitarian rankings of distributions of the four attributes who assume that individual utility functions satisfy the assumptions of second order dominance agree that India is better off in 2002 than in 1996. Furthermore, if one removes crime from the list of attributes, the dominance is shown to apply steadily over the whole period and to be of first order on the period 1988-1996.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://www.idep-fr.org/IMG/document/dt/dt0704.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Institut d'economie publique (IDEP), Marseille, France in its series IDEP Working Papers with number 0704.

Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML (with abstract), plain text (with abstract), BibTeX, RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite), ReDIF
Length: 46 pages
Date of creation: 18 May 2007
Date of revision: 18 May 2007
Handle: RePEc:iep:wpidep:0704

Contact details of provider:
Postal: 2, rue de la Charité 13002 Marseille
Phone: 04.91.14.07.70
Fax: 04.91.90.02.27
Email:
Web page: http://www.idep-fr.org/
More information through EDIRC

For corrections or technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Yves Doazan).

Related research

Keywords: Poverty; Welfare; Dominance; Multidimensional; Development; local public goods.;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Vincenzo DenicolÔ, 1999. "A characterization of utilitarianism without the transitivity axiom," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer, vol. 16(2), pages 273-278.
  2. M. Fleurbaey & C. Hagneré & A. Trannoy, 1998. "Welfare comparisons with bounded equivalence scales," THEMA Working Papers 98-23, THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise.
  3. Kolm, Serge-Christophe, 1977. "Multidimensional Egalitarianisms," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 91(1), pages 1-13, February.
  4. Gaurav Datt & Martin Ravallion, 2002. "Is India's Economic Growth Leaving the Poor Behind?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 16(3), pages 89-108, Summer.
  5. Russell Davidson & Jean-Yves Duclos, 2006. "Testing For Restricted Stochastic Dominance," Departmental Working Papers 2006-20, McGill University, Department of Economics.
  6. Yélé Maweki Batana & Jean-Yves Duclos, 2008. "Multidimensional Poverty Dominance: Statistical Inference and an Application to West Africa," Cahiers de recherche 0808, CIRPEE.
  7. Duclos, Jean-Yves & Sahn, David & Younger, Stephen D., 2001. "Robust Multidimensional Poverty Comparisons," Cahiers de recherche 0115, Université Laval - Département d'économique.
  8. NICOLAS GRAVEL & PATRICK MOYES & BENOÎT TARROUX, 2009. "Robust International Comparisons of Distributions of Disposable Income and Regional Public Goods," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 76(303), pages 432-461, 07.
  9. Shorrocks, Anthony F, 1983. "Ranking Income Distributions," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 50(197), pages 3-17, February.
  10. Atkinson, Anthony B & Bourguignon, Francois, 1982. "The Comparison of Multi-Dimensioned Distributions of Economic Status," Review of Economic Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 49(2), pages 183-201, April.
  11. Ian Crawford, 2005. "A nonparametric test of stochastic dominance in multivariate distributions," School of Economics Discussion Papers 1205, School of Economics, University of Surrey.
  12. Lipton, Michael & Ravallion, Martin, 1995. "Poverty and policy," Handbook of Development Economics, in: Hollis Chenery† & T.N. Srinivasan (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 41, pages 2551-2657 Elsevier.
  13. Samira Guennif, 2009. "Aids In India," Working Papers id:1974, eSocialSciences.
  14. Debashis Chakraborty, 2007. "IBSAC (INDIA, BRAZIL, SOUTH AFRICA, CHINA): A Potential Developing Country Coalition in WTO Negotiations," Working Papers id:958, eSocialSciences.
  15. Nicolas Gravel & Patrick Moyes, 2006. "Ethically Robust Comparisons of Distributions of Two Individual Attributes," IDEP Working Papers 0605, Institut d'economie publique (IDEP), Marseille, France, revised Aug 2006.
  16. Jean-Yves Duclos & David Sahn & Stephen D. Younger, 2005. "Robust Multidimensional Spatial Poverty Comparisons in Ghana, Madagascar, and Uganda," Cahiers de recherche 0528, CIRPEE.
  17. Davidson, Russell & Duclos, Jean-Yves, 1998. "Statistical Inference for Stochastic Dominance and for the Measurement of Poverty and Inequality," Cahiers de recherche 9805, Université Laval - Département d'économique.
  18. Bourguignon, Francois, 1989. "Family size and social utility : Income distribution dominance criteria," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 67-80, September.
  19. Jean-Yves Duclos & David Sahn & Stephen D. Younger, 2006. "Robust Multidimensional Poverty Comparisons with Discrete Indicators of Well-being," Cahiers de recherche 0628, CIRPEE.
  20. Allison, R. Andrew & Foster, James E., 2004. "Measuring health inequality using qualitative data," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 505-524, May.
  21. Dasgupta, Partha & Sen, Amartya & Starrett, David, 1973. "Notes on the measurement of inequality," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 6(2), pages 180-187, April.
  22. Laurence Henry, 2007. "Trade and Economic Arrangements Between India and South Asia in the Context of Regional Construction and Globalisation," Working Papers id:1055, eSocialSciences.
  23. Angus Deaton & Valerie Kozel, 2005. "Data and Dogma: The Great Indian Poverty Debate," World Bank Research Observer, Oxford University Press, vol. 20(2), pages 177-199.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
Cited by:
  1. Channing Arndt & Roberta Distante & M. Azhar Hussain & Lars Peter Østerdal & Pham Lan Huong & Maimuna Ibraimo, 2011. "Ordinal Welfare Comparisons with Multiple Discrete Indicators: A First Order Dominance Approach and Application to Child Poverty," Discussion Papers 11-13, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
  2. Nicolas Gravel & Benoit Tarroux, 2008. "Robust Normative Comparisons of Socially Risky Situations," IDEP Working Papers 0806, Institut d'economie publique (IDEP), Marseille, France, revised 15 Oct 2008.
  3. Damien Vaquier, 2010. "The Impact of Slum Resettlement on Urban Integration in Mumbai: The Case of the Chandivali Project," Working Papers id:2428, eSocialSciences.
  4. Damien Krichewsky, 2010. "Negotiating the Terms of A New Social Contract: Private Companies, Civil Society and the State in India," Working Papers id:2394, eSocialSciences.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iep:wpidep:0704

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Yves Doazan).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.