Issue of poverty measurement in India
We still do not have an official poverty line that goes beyond recommendations of a panel led by the late statistician Suresh Tendulkar, Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council (PMEAC) chairman Bibek Debroy said
The panel had in 2009 pegged India’s poverty line at an expenditure level of ₹33 a day in urban areas and ₹27 a day in rural areas
PMEAC chief pitches for a review of India’s official poverty line; asserts that the Niti Aayog’s Multidimensional Poverty Index ‘is not a poverty line’
Bibek Debroy said at a data user conference on the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES) 2022-23 hosted by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) that there were some “standard perennial issues” with household expenditure surveys
One of those is the aggregate of consumption expenditure and the gap between that and the consumption expenditure as defined by national income accounts.
That’s an issue that plagues every country
Challenges in Poverty Measurement
The many problems of poverty arise from the fact that the subject of enquiry is multi-dimensional, which not only considers the absolute but also the relative positions of its subjects vis-a-vis societal norms, and in relation to other people's levels.
There are, therefore, conceptual issues of who is poor and by what standard, which present relativity problems; identification issues and what tools to use in measuring poverty in both relative and absolute terms; and aggregation problems, i.e., the size and extent of poverty.
Here the problem arises on whether one should consider the number of the poor or the income shortfall, i.e., the poverty gap or the distribution of income among the poor.
Lastly, there are data constraints
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