Regional Incidence of Poverty in India: From Rich to the Poor

M. Satish Kumar 1, Amaresh Dubey 2 Chris Lloyd 1

1School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology 2National Council of Applied Economic Research, New Delhi

Regional Incidence of Poverty in India: From Rich to the Poor

M. Satish Kumar 1, Amaresh Dubey 2 Chris Lloyd 1

1School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology 2National Council of Applied Economic Research, New Delhi

Paper presented in the Fourth International Conference on Population Geographies

Hong Kong, 10-13 July 2007

Esther Lee Building, Chung Chi College,The Chinese University of Hong Kong,Shatin, NT, Hong Kong

Devil is in the details of the Concept and the Data

Four quinquennial (thick) rounds of the National Sample Survey Consumer Expenditure Survey (NSS CES) including the 38th Round conducted in 1983, the 42nd Round in July 1983 to June 1984; the 43rd Round in1987/8, the 50th in 1993/4 and the 55th in 1999/00.

From the NSSO survey, towns were classified into the following groups

S1 Small Towns: Population less than 50,000

S2: Medium towns Population less than 50,000 to 200,000

S3: Large cities Population less than 200,000 to 1 million

S4: Metropolitan Cities Population more than1000000

Research Questions:

Whether the incidence of rural poverty is declining faster than the incidence of urban poverty?

Whether the incidence of urban poverty is higher than the incidence of rural poverty?

How far urban poor is becoming dominant in industrially advanced regions of India in comparison to rural areas?

The following established measures of poverty would be derived:

the Head Count ratio (HCR), the Poverty Gap Index (PGI),the Foster, Greer & Thorbecke (FGT) index.

Positive association between growth of million plus cities and change in urban poverty

y = 1.8981x + 11.846

R2 = 0.528

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-16 -14 -12 -10 -8 -6 -4 -2 0

URB_9900-9394

UCS4_9900-9394

Positive association between growth of small towns and change in rural poverty

y = 0.611x - 0.3595

R2 = 0.1815

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-25 -20 -15 -10 -5 0

RUR_9900-9394

UCS1_9900-9394