IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cde/cdewps/107.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Poverty and Inequality in India: A Reexamination

Author

Listed:
  • Angus Deaton and Jean Drèze

    (Research Program in Development Studies Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University)

  • Jean Drèze

    (Delhi School of Economics)

Abstract

This paper presents a new set of integrated poverty and inequality estimates for India and Indian states for 1987-88, 1993-94 and 1999-2000. The poverty estimates are broadly consistent with independent evidence on per-capita expenditure, state domestic product and real agricultural wages. They show that poverty decline in the 1990s proceeded more or less in line with earlier trends. Regional disparities increased in the 1990s, with the southern and western regions doing much better than the northern and eastern regions. Economic inequality also increased within states, especially within urban areas, and between urban and rural areas. We briefly examine other development indicators, relating for instance to health and education. Most indicators have continued to improve in the nineties, but social progress has followed very diverse patterns, ranging from accelerated progress in some fields to slowdown and even regression in others. We find no support for sweeping claims that the nineties have been a period of "unprecedented improvement" or "widespread impoverishment".

Suggested Citation

  • Angus Deaton and Jean Drèze & Jean Drèze, 2002. "Poverty and Inequality in India: A Reexamination," Working papers 107, Centre for Development Economics, Delhi School of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:cde:cdewps:107
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cdedse.org/pdf/work107.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. Acharya, Sarthi, 1989. "Agricultural Wages in India: A Disaggregated Analysis," Indian Journal of Agricultural Economics, Indian Society of Agricultural Economics, vol. 44(2), April.
    3. Subramanian, Shankar & Deaton, Angus, 1996. "The Demand for Food and Calories," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(1), pages 133-162, February.
    4. Shujie Yao, 1999. "Economic growth, income inequality and poverty in china under economic reforms," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(6), pages 104-130.
    5. Diewert, W. E., 1976. "Exact and superlative index numbers," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(2), pages 115-145, May.
    6. Khan, Azizur Rahman & Riskin, Carl, 2001. "Inequality and Poverty in China in the Age of Globalization," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195136494, Decembrie.
    7. Gaurav Datt, 1999. "Has Poverty Declined since Economic Reforms? Statistical Data Analysis," Monash Economics Working Papers archive-31, Monash University, Department of Economics.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Fulong Wu, 2007. "The Poverty of Transition: From Industrial District to Poor Neighbourhood in the City of Nanjing, China," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 44(13), pages 2673-2694, December.
    2. Zhu, Nong & Luo, Xubei, 2006. "Nonfarm activity and rural income inequality : a case study of two provinces in China," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3811, The World Bank.
    3. Raghbendra JHA, 2008. "Economic Reforms and Human Development Indicators in India," Asian Economic Policy Review, Japan Center for Economic Research, vol. 3(2), pages 290-310, December.
    4. de Janvry, Alain & Sadoulet, Elisabeth & Zhu, Nong, 2005. "The Role of Non-Farm Incomes in Reducing Rural Poverty and Inequality in China," CUDARE Working Papers 25043, University of California, Berkeley, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
    5. Massimiliano Calì & Carlo Menon, 2013. "Does Urbanization Affect Rural Poverty? Evidence from Indian Districts," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 27(2), pages 171-201.
    6. Nong ZHU, 2002. "L’impact des activités non-agricoles rurales sur le revenu des agriculteurs en Chine," Working Papers 200222, CERDI.
    7. Nong Zhu & Xubei Luo, 2010. "The impact of migration on rural poverty and inequality: a case study in China," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 41(2), pages 191-204, March.
    8. Raghbendra Jha & Raghav Gaiha, 2003. "Determinants of Undernutrition in Rural India," Departmental Working Papers 2003-06, The Australian National University, Arndt-Corden Department of Economics.
    9. Yao, Shujie & Zhang, Zongyi & Hanmer, Lucia, 2004. "Growing inequality and poverty in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 145-163.
    10. Barnett, William A. & Erwin Diewert, W. & Zellner, Arnold, 2011. "Introduction to measurement with theory," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 161(1), pages 1-5, March.
    11. Lisbeth Funding la Cour, 1995. "A Component® based Analysis of the danish Long-run Money Demand Relation," Discussion Papers 95-18, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
    12. Jaya Jumrani & P. S. Birthal, 2017. "Does consumption of tobacco and alcohol affect household food security? Evidence from rural India," Food Security: The Science, Sociology and Economics of Food Production and Access to Food, Springer;The International Society for Plant Pathology, vol. 9(2), pages 255-279, April.
    13. Santos, João & Domingos, Tiago & Sousa, Tânia & St. Aubyn, Miguel, 2016. "Does a small cost share reflect a negligible role for energy in economic production? Testing for aggregate production functions including capital, labor, and useful exergy through a cointegration-base," MPRA Paper 70850, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Muhammad Ali Chaudhary & Eatzaz Ahmad & Abid A. Burki & Mushtaq A. Khan, 1999. "Industrial Sector Input Demand Responsiveness and Policy Interventions," The Pakistan Development Review, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, vol. 38(4), pages 1083-1100.
    15. Claude Hillinger, 2002. "A General Theory of Price and Quantity Aggregation and Welfare Measurement," CESifo Working Paper Series 818, CESifo.
    16. Basole, Amit & Basu, Deepankar, 2015. "Fuelling Calorie Intake Decline: Household-Level Evidence from Rural India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 82-95.
    17. McGath, Christopher & McElroy, Robert G. & Strickland, Roger & Traub, Larry & Convey, Theodore & Short, Sara D. & Johnson, James & Green, Report & Ali, Mir B. & Vogel, Stephen, 2009. "Forecasting Farm Income: Documenting USDA's Forecast Model," Technical Bulletins 184311, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    18. W. Erwin Diewert & Robert C. Feenstra, 2021. "Estimating the Benefits of New Products," NBER Chapters, in: Big Data for Twenty-First-Century Economic Statistics, pages 437-473, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Thomas von Brasch & Håkon Grini & Magnus Berglund Johnsen & Trond Christian Vigtel, 2021. "An exact additive decomposition of the weighted arithmetic mean," Discussion Papers 944, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    20. Redding, Stephen J. & Weinstein, David E., 2016. "A unified approach to estimating demand and welfare," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 67681, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Poverty ; Inequality ; Survey methods ; India;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I3 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty
    • O53 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Asia including Middle East
    • C42 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics - - - Survey Methods

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:cde:cdewps:107. 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: Sanjeev Sharma (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cdudein.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.