India's National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) has been hailed as one of the country's most creative social initiatives. Since the program was begun only recently (in 2004-05) there is a need to assess its impact on households not just in one year but over time. To the best of our...

Using primary data collected during 2007-08 we examine nutritional status with respect to two macronutrients as well as various micronutrients of rural households in three Indian states: Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan and find serious deficiencies in regard to these nutrients in all...

This paper focuses on the targeting accuracy of NREG in two Indian states, Madhya Pradesh (MP) and Tamil Nadu (TN), based on household data for 2008–09. In order to overcome the difficulties arising from the use of a headcount index and a specific poverty threshold, stochastic dominance tests...

The workfare scheme the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) and the direct food subsidy program the Targeted Public Distribution Scheme (TPDS) represent two alternative social safety nets instituted in India as anti-poverty measures. This paper examines whether from the point of...

Despite its evident importance relatively little is known about links between Body Mass Index (BMI) and participation in workfare programs, particularly in India. Using a unique data set for the Indian state of Rajasthan for 2009–10, this paper attempts to fill this void and examines the...

Using household level data this paper provides systematic evidence on the employment impact of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in three Indian states: Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra. We model this as a two stage Heckman procedure where we model selection for NREGS in...

In response to the Deaton–Dreze (2009) explanation of a downward shift in the calorie Engel curve in terms of lower requirements due to health improvements and lower activity levels, we have developed an alternative explanation of changes in the consumption of calories, protein and fats over...

The present analysis seeks to build on household economics literature by focusing on who in fact has most say in cooking-the female spouse, the husband or a senior female member/ the mother-in-law-and how this role is shaped by a diversity of factors (e.g. caste, type of family, demographic...

Recent high rates of economic growth in India have been accompanied by major dietary transitions. Using a nationwide household survey, India Human Development Survey 2005, this paper estimates the impact of such transitions on the incidence of non communicable diseases (NCDs) such as diabetes,...