This paper utilises micro data on consumption, family composition and land ownership of nearly 70,000 rural Indian households to analyse poverty in rural India. The study, conducted at the disaggregated level of individual States, examines the impact of household size and composition, caste, gender of household head, and size of land ownership on a household's poverty status. The introduction of consumption economies of household size and of adult/child consumption relativities affect the poverty estimates but not the State poverty rankings. Scheduled castes/tribes are more vulnerable to poverty than others. In contrast, female headed households display, in many States, higher poverty only in the presence of size economies and adult/child relativities. However, the latter result is not always true. On this and in several other respects, the study finds sharp differences between the constituent States of the Indian Union. © 2002 Society for Policy Modelling. Published by Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Research Division:	Economics
Research Group:	Applied economics
Research Field:	Welfare economics
Objective Division:	Economic Framework
Objective Group:	Microeconomics
Objective Field:	Consumption
UTAS Author:	Ray, R (Professor Ranjan Ray)
ID Code:	25467
Year Published:	2002
Web of Science® Times Cited:	42
Deposited By:	Economics and Finance
Deposited On:	2002-08-01
Last Modified:	2011-11-16
Downloads:	0