Poverty, Chronic Poverty and Poverty Dynamics (eBook)

Aasha_Kapur Mehta is Professor of Economics at the Indian Institute of Public Administration. She studied at Delhi School of Economics, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi and Iowa State University, USA. She is a McNamara fellow and a Fulbright Scholar. She was a Member of Working Groups for the 11th and 12th Plans; chaired two subgroups; served as a Member of the core group of the Cabinet Secretariat Ad-hoc Task Force for reviewing RFDs of Ministries/Departments of Government of India and State Governments; and Member of Committees constituted by Ministries such as MoRD, MoPR, MoSPI and MWCD. She was invited as an expert to assist Niti Aayog in formulating the Rural Economy chapter for the Vision, Strategy and Action Plan document. She has led the work of the Chronic Poverty Research Centre in India for more than a decade. Her publications are on poverty, human and gender development indicators, multi-dimensional deprivation, gender issues, gender budgeting and data gaps. Shashanka_Bhide is presently Director of Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS), Chennai. He was a senior researcher at the National Council of Applied Economic Research, New Delhi before joining MIDS. He received his PhD from Iowa State University, USA and Masters from Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi. He has worked in the areas of macroeconomic modelling and forecasting, agricultural economics, infrastructure and issues relating to chronic poverty in rural India.Anand Kumar is a Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla since 2016. Prior to this he worked as a Professor of Sociology at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, from 1998. He received an MA in Sociology at the Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi, 1972; an MPhil in Sociology at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, 1975; and a PhD in Sociology at the University of Chicago in 1986. He was a Lecturer in Sociology at BHU from 1979 to 1989, an Associate Professor of Sociology at JNU from 1990 to 1998. He also taught as India Chair in Germany (Albert Ludwig University, Freiburg) and GSP Scholar at Humboldt University (Berlin, Germany). He was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Tufts University from January to May 2013, International Faculty at Innsbruck University (Austria), GSP faculty at FLACSO (Buenos Aires, Argentina), Visiting Professor at NEHU, Shillong, Kashmir University, Srinagar and Central University of Tripura. He was President of the Indian Sociological Society (2013 - 2015). Amita Shah is an economist, with wide-ranging experience of conducting research on various aspects of development studies. She is presently working with Centre for Development Alternatives (CFDA), Ahmedabad, as a Honorary. Fellow. Prior to this she was a Professor and Director of Gujarat Institute of Development Research, Ahmedabad. She has worked closely with a number of bilateral and multilateral organisations besides a number of government agencies and ministries at the center and state level, and participated in an informed process of policy formulation. She has extensively undertaken collaborative research both within and outside India. She has published about 100 research papers in professional journals and has co-authored/ edited four books. She has been invited as a Visiting Fellow/Scholar to academic institutions in United Kingdom, China, France, Netherlands, and Canada. She was President of Indian Society for Ecological Economics (2013-15).

Foreword 5
Preface 7
Acknowledgements 9
Contents 11
Editors and Contributors 12
Acronyms 15
List of Figures 21
List of Tables 22
List of Boxes 26
1 Introduction 27
1 Introduction 27
2 Poverty Trends, Measures and the SDGs 29
3 Poverty Dynamics 30
4 Hunger and Poverty 30
5 Conflict and Poverty 31
6 Migration as a Coping Mechanism 31
7 Ill Health and Poverty 32
8 Education and Poverty 33
9 Achieving SDG1 33
10 Limitations 34
2 Poverty Trends and Measures 35
1 Introduction 35
2 Trends in Poverty: Incidence and Determinants 36
2.1 The Poverty Line 38
2.2 Global Standards for Measuring Extreme Poverty 43
3 Social, Spatial and Occupational Concentration of Poverty 44
4 Factors Affecting the Incidence of Poverty 55
5 Growth and Incidence of Poverty 57
6 Bands of Vulnerability or Poverty 58
7 Conclusions 59
References 59
3 A Review of Poverty Dynamics Issues 63
1 Introduction 63
2 Drivers, Maintainers And Interrupters 65
3 Dynamics of Poverty: Entry, Escape And Traps 67
3.1 Poverty Persistence, Entry and Escape: Findings of Panel Data-Based Studies 68
3.2 Characteristics of Chronic Poverty 71
3.3 Factors Reducing Persistence or Enabling Exit from Poverty 72
3.4 Factors Leading to Entry into Poverty 73
4 Assessing Future Prospects of Poverty Reduction 74
5 Summary and Conclusions 76
References 77
4 Hunger, Under-Nutrition and Food Security in India 80
1 Introduction 80
2 Types and Dimensions of Hunger 82
2.1 Self-reported Hunger 83
2.2 Food Insecurity 85
2.3 Calorie Consumption 88
2.4 BMI 91
2.5 Under-nourished Children 92
2.6 Factors Other Than Food that Lead to Malnutrition 93
2.7 Child Mortality 94
3 Composite Hunger Index by IFPRI 95
4 Analysis of Major Programmes and Policy Options 96
5 What Needs to Be Done? 98
5.1 PDS 103
5.2 Food Security Act, 2013 104
5.3 Cash Transfers 105
5.4 Reducing Leakages Through Technology 106
5.5 School Meals 107
5.6 Nutrition Programmes for Children Below 5 Years 108
5.6.1 ICDS – Some Evaluations 108
5.7 Governance Issues 109
5.8 Summing Up 113
References 114
5 Addressing Poverty and Conflict: Learning from a Gandhian Initiative in Mushahari (Muzaffarpur, Bihar) 118
1 Introduction: Poverty, Conflict and Beyond 118
1.1 The Mushahari Experience 123
2 Contextualising the Mushahari Experience 125
2.1 Background to Mushahari Block 125
2.2 The Conflict in Mushahari 127
3 Sarvodaya Response to the Challenges of Poverty and Maoist Violence: The Mushahari Plan 129
4 Strengths and Limits of the Gram Swaraj Approach 133
5 Poverty and Society in Mushahari: The Post-conflict Scene 137
5.1 Caste and Village Profile 140
5.2 Incidence of Chronic Poverty 140
5.3 Occupations and Unemployment 140
5.4 Landholding in the Region 142
5.5 Migration 146
5.6 Summing Up 146
6 Towards Conclusions 147
References 149
6 Changing Scenario of Migration and Poverty in India: Reflections and Issues 151
1 Migration and Poverty in India: A Multi-patterned Reality 151
2 Migration and Poverty: Select Review of Evidence and Perspective 154
2.1 What Does the Official Data Show? 154
2.2 Migration Over Time 155
3 Migration and Rural Poverty: Some Perspectives 156
3.1 Short-Term Migration 157
3.2 Short-Term Migration and Poverty Over Time Among Major States 159
4 Short-Term Migration Among States: Evidence from Selected Villages 162
5 Migration Among Households in Select Villages: Understanding the Variations in a Micro-setting in MP 167
6 Summing up and Way Forward 170
References 174
7 Ill Health and Poverty: Policy Imperatives for Achieving SDG3 176
1 The Context 176
2 India’s Health Outcomes and Disease Burden: A Comparison with Selected Countries 179
2.1 State of Health 179
2.1.1 Disease Burden 179
2.1.2 Morbidity, Anaemia and Malnutrition 182
2.1.3 Contribution of Different Diseases to Death 185
2.2 Spatial Differences in Outcomes 187
2.2.1 Status of Health Outcomes in Large States: 2014–15 and 2015–2016 187
2.3 Positive and Negative Trends in Health Outcomes in Large States: 2014–15 and 2015–16 188
3 Health Financing 190
4 National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), State of Health Provisioning and Disease Burden 192
5 Implementing Programmes for Better Outcomes 209
References 214
8 Interface Between Education and Poverty in India: Eluding Goals and Search for New Perspectives? 218
1 Education and Expectations 219
1.1 Relationship between Education and Poverty 219
1.2 Constitutional Obligations and State Response: The Education Miracle in India 220
1.3 Economic Growth and Returns to Education: Does It Help the Poor and Chronic Poor? 221
1.4 Unfinished Agenda and Policy Initiatives 222
1.5 Objectives 224
2 Education for Income and Empowerment: Setting the Context 225
2.1 Mapping the Education Gap Among States and Communities 228
2.2 Enrolment and Dropout 229
2.3 Literacy Rates and Educational Attainment 231
3 Income and Education Poverty 233
3.1 Link Between Literacy and Poverty Across States 235
4 Poverty and Education among Social Groups 236
4.1 Education and Chronic Poverty 238
5 Returns to Education: A Review of Evidence and Issues 240
6 The Unfinished Tasks and Future Options: Discussion of Selected Policy Issues 242
7 Concluding Remarks 251
Appendix 252
References 259
9 Conclusions 263
1 Achieving SDG1 Through Core of the Core Schemes: NSAP and MGNREGS 266
1.1 National Social Assistance Programme (NSAP) 266
2 MGNREGS 268
3 What Needs to Be Done to End Poverty 269
References 271
Index 272