IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bwp/bwppap/21114.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Money-metric poverty, welfare, growth, and inequality in India: 1983 – 2011/12

Author

Listed:
  • S. Subramanian
  • D. Jayaraj

Abstract

On the record of poverty and inequality in India over the last thirty or so years, the general scholarly view seems to be that there have been substantial declines in money-metric poverty, that there has been no significant over-time increase in inequality, and that the growth in per capita consumption expenditure has not been marked by any discernible evidence of non-inclusiveness. It is argued in this paper that inferences of this nature are largely a consequence of the particular approaches to the measurement of poverty, inequality and inclusiveness that have been generally adopted in the literature. Alternative, and arguably more plausible, protocols of measurement suggest a picture of money-metric deprivation and disparity in India which shares little in common with the product of received wisdom on the subject.

Suggested Citation

  • S. Subramanian & D. Jayaraj, 2014. "Money-metric poverty, welfare, growth, and inequality in India: 1983 – 2011/12," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series 21114, GDI, The University of Manchester.
    • Handle: RePEc:bwp:bwppap:21114
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hummedia.manchester.ac.uk/institutes/gdi/publications/workingpapers/bwpi/bwpi-wp-21114.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kolm, Serge-Christophe, 1976. "Unequal inequalities. II," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 82-111, August.
    2. Kolm, Serge-Christophe, 1976. "Unequal inequalities. I," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 416-442, June.
    3. T. N. Srinivasan, 2017. "Planning, Poverty and Political Economy of Reforms: A Tribute to Suresh D. Tendulkar," India Studies in Business and Economics, in: K.L. Krishna & Vishwanath Pandit & K. Sundaram & Pami Dua (ed.), Perspectives on Economic Development and Policy in India, chapter 0, pages 3-32, Springer.
    4. Bhalla, Surjit, 2011. "Inclusion and growth in India: some facts, some conclusions," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 38366, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    5. Angus Deaton & Jean Dreze, 2002. "Poverty and Inequality in India: A Re-Examination," Working Papers 184, Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Research Program in Development Studies..
    6. Sanjay G Reddy, 2007. "The Great Indian Poverty Debate," Development, Palgrave Macmillan;Society for International Deveopment, vol. 50(2), pages 166-171, June.
    7. Basu, Kaushik, 2006. "Globalization, poverty, and inequality: What is the relationship? What can be done?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 34(8), pages 1361-1373, August.
    8. Sen, Amartya, 1983. "Poor, Relatively Speaking," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 35(2), pages 153-169, July.
    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.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Manfred Krtscha, 2017. "Some axiomatics of inequality measurement, with specific reference to intermediate indices," Working Papers 445, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. S. Subramanian & D. Jayaraj, 2013. "Economic Inequality in India," Challenge, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 56(4), pages 26-37.
    2. repec:unu:wpaper:wp2012-57 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Rolf Aaberge & François Bourguignon & Andrea Brandolini & Francisco H. G. Ferreira & Janet C. Gornick & John Hills & Markus Jäntti & Stephen P. Jenkins & Eric Marlier & John Micklewright & Brian Nolan, 2017. "Tony Atkinson and his Legacy," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 63(3), pages 411-444, September.
    4. Aprea, Massimo & Raitano, Michele, 2025. "Income inequality in times of high inflation in Europe," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 449-459.
    5. Pascual Saez, Marta & Cantarero Prieto, David, 2013. "Understanding Health Economics: A Review of Efficiency, Equity and Inequalities Studies /Entendiendo la Economía de la Salud: Una revisión de los estudios sobre eficiencia, equidad y desigualdades," Estudios de Economia Aplicada, Estudios de Economia Aplicada, vol. 31, pages 281-302, Septiembr.
    6. Aswini Kumar Mishra & Viral M. Parmar, 2017. "Changing Contours of Income Stratification and Decomposition of Income Inequality: Evidence from Recent Longitudinal Survey in India," Journal of Quantitative Economics, Springer;The Indian Econometric Society (TIES), vol. 15(2), pages 395-422, June.
    7. James Foster & Joel Greer & Erik Thorbecke, 2010. "The Foster–Greer–Thorbecke (FGT) poverty measures: 25 years later," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 8(4), pages 491-524, December.
    8. James E. Foster & Joel Greer & Erik Thorbecke, 2010. "The Foster-Greer-Thorbecke (FGT) Poverty Measures: Twenty-Five Years Later," Working Papers 2010-14, The George Washington University, Institute for International Economic Policy.
    9. Jayaraj, D. & Subramanian, Sreenivasan, 2012. "On the 'Inclusiveness' of India's Consumption Expenditure Growth," WIDER Working Paper Series 057, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    10. Anthony B. Atkinson & Andrea Brandolini, 2010. "On Analyzing the World Distribution of Income," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 24(1), pages 1-37, January.
    11. S. Subramanian, 2019. "Some Logical and Normative Issues Relating to Measurement in the Social Sciences," Journal of Quantitative Economics, Springer;The Indian Econometric Society (TIES), vol. 17(4), pages 937-948, December.
    12. D. Jayaraj & S. Sreenivasan, 2015. "Growth and inequality in the distribution of India's consumption expenditure: 1983 to 2009-10," WIDER Working Paper Series 025, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    13. Kristof Bosmans & Z. Emel Öztürk, 2022. "Laissez-faire versus Pareto," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 58(4), pages 741-751, May.
    14. Robson, Matthew & O’Donnell, Owen & Van Ourti, Tom, 2024. "Aversion to health inequality — Pure, income-related and income-caused," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    15. Joshua Greenstein, 2020. "The Precariat Class Structure and Income Inequality among US Workers: 1980–2018," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 52(3), pages 447-469, September.
    16. Jo Thori Lind & Karl Moene, 2011. "Miserly Developments," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(9), pages 1332-1352, June.
    17. Teixidó Figueras, Jordi & Duro Moreno, Juan Antonio, 2012. "Ecological Footprint Inequality: A methodological review and some results," Working Papers 2072/203168, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Economics.
    18. Chakravarty, Satya R. & Sarkar, Palash, 2022. "A synthesis of local and effective tax progressivity measurement," MPRA Paper 115180, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Casilda Lasso de la Vega & Christian Seidl, 2007. "The Impossibility of a Just Pigouvian," Working Papers 69, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    20. Bosmans, Kristof & Cowell, Frank A., 2010. "The class of absolute decomposable inequality measures," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 109(3), pages 154-156, December.
    21. Torregrosa-Hetland, Sara, 2016. "Sticky Income Inequality In The Spanish Transition (1973-1990)," Revista de Historia Económica / Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 34(1), pages 39-80, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bwp:bwppap:21114. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Rowena Harding (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/wpmanuk.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.