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Poverty & Inequality

India’s poverty rate does not measure what you think it does

Like all national poverty rates, India’s poverty rate is interpreted as the share of the population that is poor in a given year. In this post, Merfeld and Morduch argue that, in practice, India’s...

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In-kind transfers: Deadweight losses or gains?

Do in-kind transfers for social assistance lead to ‘deadweight losses’ by restricting consumer choice? This article presents findings from an experiment in Maharashtra, which involved offering low...

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Rethinking social safety nets in a changing society

This paper was coauthored by Debasis Barik, Pallavi Choudhuri, Bijay Chouhan, Om Prakash Sharma, Dinesh Kumar Tiwari (NCAER) and Sharan Sharma (University of Maryland College Park and NCAER). Histori...

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The decline of rural earning inequality in India

While earnings inequality remained virtually unchanged in urban India between 2004-05 and 2011-12, it declined sharply in rural India over this period. This column finds that although the change in t...

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Disintermediating the State: Would a universal basic income reduce poverty more than targeted programmes?

Commenting on the discussion of the universal basic income in India’s Economic Survey 2016-17, Justin Sandefur contends that a modest version of UBI could potentially save money and shift expenditu...

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Getting kinky with chickens

In the context of Bill Gates’ commitment to chickens as a high-impact poverty intervention, Chris Blattman recently proposed a study to compare interventions that provide chicken rather than cash, ...

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Income inequality in a globalising world

Since the turn of the century, income inequality has risen to be among the most prominent policy issues of our time. This column looks at inequality trends in recent decades. While relative global in...

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The tale and maths of universal basic income

Commenting on the discussion on universal basic income in the recently released Economic Survey, Jean Drèze argues that UBI is an idea whose time will come, but that time is still quite distant as f...

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Inequality in the typical country in the last 25 years

While inequality has received a great deal of attention in the public debate in recent times, the poor quality of data available on this issue is a constraint. Based on a recently-compiled database o...

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Decoding universal basic income for India

In this article, Jean Drèze argues that while universal basic income is a good idea in principle, as far as India today is concerned, it sounds like premature articulation. It could also become a Tr...

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A universal basic income to step up economic reform

In this article, Nimai Mehta, Academic Director of the Global Economics and Business Program at the American University, highlights the political challenge of introducing the wider set of reforms nee...

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What do we know about the wealthy in India? A pre-liberalisation analysis

Academic attention on the metamorphosis and concentration of wealth has so far excluded poor countries. This column analyses wealth distribution in India, post-independence and pre-liberalisation. It...

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Universal basic income for India

In this article, Vijay Joshi, Emeritus Fellow of Merton College, University of Oxford, sets out his proposal for a universal basic income (UBI) in India. He contends that deep fiscal adjustment, in co...

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Poverty reduction in India: Revisiting past debates with 60 years of data

There has been much debate about the poverty impacts of economic growth and structural transformation in developing countries. This column revisits these issues using a newly constructed dataset of p...

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The universal basic share and social incentives

In the previous article in the series, Debraj Ray proposes a simple amendment of the universal basic income called the universal basic share. In this article, Debraj Ray and Karl Ove Moene (Universit...

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Pulapre Balakrishnan

Centre for Development Studies

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Aman Raj

Krea University

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Sujata Balasubramanian

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

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Kanika Mahajan

Ashoka University

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Kunal Sen

UNU-WIDER

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Saloni Khurana

World Bank & IIFT

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Jonathan Morduch

New York University

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KDI School of Public Policy and Management

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Most Popular Poverty & Inequality Posts

Wealth inequality, class, and caste in India: 1961-2012

The level of wealth inequality in India is close to that of some highly unequal countries in the world. This article assesses the long-term evolution of wealth inequality in the country for the period...

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Covid-19: What can be done immediately to help vulnerable population

With over 80% of India’s workforce employed in the informal sector and one-third working as casual labour, Covid-19's spread and subsequent unplanned lockdowns, have created economic havoc in the li...

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A review of the coverage of PDS

The coverage of the Public Distribution System (PDS) has been of wide interest due to the pandemic and lockdown. Based on government data sources, Khera and Somanchi estimate the state-wise coverage o...

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