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Poverty & Inequality

Covid-19: Health and economic impacts in Indian slums

  • Notes from the Field

The Covid-19 crisis and food security

India’s national lockdown in 2020, imposed to contain the spread of Covid-19, threw millions of people out of work and sharply reduced earnings for those who remained employed. Based on data from mu...

  • Perspectives

Covid-19: Impact on income inequality in India

Even as global inequality was falling, income inequality in India increased during 1990-2019. With the occurrence of Covid-19, the trend of increasing income inequality in the country is expected to n...

  • Articles

PDS, National Food Security Act, and Covid-19

Introduced in 2013, the National Food Security Act (NFSA) brought about fundamental reforms in the public distribution system (PDS) and most importantly, declared a legal ‘right to food’. Based on...

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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, ...

  • Perspectives

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...

  • Articles

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...

  • Perspectives

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...

  • Articles

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...

  • Perspectives

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...

  • Perspectives

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...

  • Perspectives

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...

  • Perspectives

Minimum standard of living for all Indians

In this article, T.N. Srinivasan, Samuel C. Park, Jr. Professor Emeritus of Economics, Yale University, contends that the idea of an assured minimum income for all citizens of India was being discuss...

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The universal basic share

Debraj Ray, Professor of Economics at NYU, proposes a simple amendment of the universal basic income – what he calls the ‘universal basic share’. The idea is to commit a fixed fraction of the g...

  • Perspectives

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Most Popular Poverty & Inequality Posts

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...

  • Perspectives

Lockdown, life, and livelihood in the times of Corona

After around 36 hours of the lockdown to prevent the spread of Covid-19 in India, the Finance Minister announced a slew of welfare measures amounting to Rs. 1.7 trillion to support the vulnerable popu...

  • Perspectives

EWS reservation in higher education: Affirmative action or vote bank politics?

The Constitution (103rd Amendment) Act, 2019, provides for 10% reservation for the economically weaker sections (EWS) in higher educational institutions within the general category. In this post, Devi...

  • Perspectives