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India has seen enormous reductions in poverty in the past few decades. However, much of this progress has been unequal throughout the country. This paper examined the 2019–2021 National Family Health Survey to examine small area variations in four measures of household poverty. Overall, the results show that clusters and states were the largest sources of variation for the four measures of poverty. These findings also show persistent within-district inequality when examining the bottom 10th wealth percentile, bottom 20th wealth percentile, and multidimensional poverty. Thus, these findings pinpoint the precise districts where between-cluster inequality in poverty is most prevalent. This can help guide policy makers in terms of targeting policies aimed at reducing poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses unit level data available from the 70th round of NSSO to analyse the livelihood choices among agricultural households in India and to assess the factors that influence such choices. Cluster analysis is employed to demarcate the livelihood options in terms of intra- household allocation of labour to various activities. The findings reveal that while overall agriculture is the mainstay of the agricultural households, significant variations in livelihoods exist among different landowning classes with the landless and marginal landowners being more dependent on livelihoods involving agricultural and non-agricultural labour. As landless and marginal landowners constitute the majority of rural households in India, the need to generategainful livelihoods for these households poses the single most important development challenge. As subsequent analysis has shown, households adopting casual wage labour as a livelihood option are at a higher risk of poverty. In contrast, households that are able to adopt salaried employment or other types of non-farm-based livelihoods have a lower incidence of poverty. Education is the single most important factor determining access to these livelihoods. Significant variations are found across Indian states in terms oflivelihood structures. The state level regressions showed that while some factors such as per capita ownership of land had a uniform effect in influencing livelihood choices across all states, the role of other factors such as age, caste and education vary across states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of household wealth dynamic remains an important methodology in the identification of poverty traps. To overcome measurement issues in survey data, livelihoods-based approaches of the dynamics of poverty are typically examined using panel regressions of a livelihoods regression on household assets and other socio-economic factors over time. In this paper, we characterise the livelihoods regression as a 'livelihoods technology', and use a latent class-technology approach to account for heterogeneity in how households generate a livelihood. We use a detailed dataset from rural India covering 213 households across 2001–2014, and control for selection issues through a Heckman Selection model. Our results are the first in the wealth dynamics literature to show that substantial heterogeneity exists in the technologies with which households generate their livelihoods. Importantly, we show that accounting for heterogeneity in household livelihoods 'technologies' more readily identifies different equilibria in wealth levels and provides previously foregone information on who is poor and why they remain poor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses primary data collected from 325 rural households in one of the remote but densely populated districts of Assam, India, to evaluate the impact of internally generated remittances on household welfare, spending patterns and labour supply decisions of left-behind adult family members. Using selectivity-corrected covariate balancing propensity score matching method and also endogeneity-corrected instrumental variable analysis, the study finds that remittances from kith and kin residing elsewhere in the country serve to increase the monthly per-capita consumption expenditure of rural households and help to lower the level, depth and severity of poverty. Remittances have also been observed to influence household spending patterns with higher proportion of annual expenditure being devoted to food and education by recipient households. In the labour market, remittances are found to give rise to a 'dependency syndrome' as adult members belonging to remittance-receiving households were less likely to enter the labour market. However, no significant adverse impact of remittances on labour intensity by employed workers was observed. Remittances were also found to be lowering the probability of workers being engaged as casual daily wage labourers while enhancing the likelihood of salaried employment and agricultural and non-agricultural businesses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine economic mobility in India while accounting for misclassification to better understand the welfare effects of the rise in inequality. To proceed, we extend recently developed methods on the partial identification of transition matrices. Allowing for modest misclassification, we find overall mobility has been remarkably low: at least 65% of poor households remained poor or at-risk of being poor between 2005 and 2012. We also find Muslims, lower caste groups, and rural households are in a more disadvantageous position compared to Hindus, upper caste groups, and urban households. These findings cast doubt on the conventional wisdom that marginalized households in India are catching up. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the determinants of unidimensional and multidimensional poverty among the farm households of rural India, using the data of India Human Development Surveys conducted in 2004–2005 and 2011–2012. We found a significant reduction in poverty among these households over this period. However, this reduction was not uniform across different sub‐groups of the farm households. Our findings confirm that the important factors of poverty dynamics in India are educational attainment, number of household members, and caste. We observed that caste and household size considerably impacted the unidimensional poverty significantly, but not the multidimensional poverty, which was affected more by the education level of the heads of household. The study concludes that unidimensional poverty significantly matters for multidimensional poverty and vice versa in terms of determining poverty dynamics. Hence, target‐based interventions in education, nutrition, and better access to water and sanitation, particularly to lower social groups (schedule classes, scheduled tribes, and other backward classes) help in reducing multidimensional poverty in rural India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As many other countries, India leverages on a pre‐existing workfare programme as a COVID‐19 response. We combine monthly administrative data with migration and poverty statistics and provide four insights on the recent expansion of the programme. First, poorer districts include more households, that is, increasing extensive margin. Second, in districts with a high proportion of return migrants, there is no increase, and third, unmet demand for work is higher than the national average of 22.7%. Fourth, despite the expansion, the programme provided just 13.5 days per rural household. The programme requires attention to fulfil its promise as a credible safety net. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]