This case study for India finds an explanation for the drop in average household consumption in rural areas occurring in the year after the 1991 stabilization program instigated to deal with a macroeconomic crisis. A number of factors contributed to falling average living standards, including...

Survey-based welfare indicators can fluctuate over time in ways which have little to do with macroeconomic changes in the economy. So basing policy decisions on short-term movements in such welfare indicators can be hazardous. There was a sharp increase in India's poverty measures in the...

The extent to which India's poor have benefited from the country’s economic growth has long been debated. This paper revisits the issues using a new series of consumption-based poverty measures spanning 50 years, and including a 15-year period after economic reforms began in earnest in the...

There has been much debate about how much India's poor have shared in the economic growth unleashed by economic reforms in the 1990s. Datt and Ravallion argue that India has probably maintained its 1980s rate of poverty reduction in the 1990s. However, there is considerable diversity in...

December 1999 - Nonfarm economic growth in India had very different effects on poverty in different states. Nonfarm growth was least effective at reducing poverty in states where initial conditions were poor in terms of rural development and human resources. Among initial conditions conducive to...