Poverty in India during the 1990s : A Regional Perspective

The authors provide estimates of poverty at the regional level in India, spanning the 1990s. Such estimates have not been previously available due to concerns regarding non-comparability of the 1993-94 and 1999-2000 National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) household survey data. They implement an adjustment procedure to restore comparability based on a methodology developed by Elbers and others (2003). The results indicate a less rapid decline of poverty, at the all-India level than has been suggested by Deaton and Dre (2002), based on a related adjustment methodology. The authors attempt to uncover the source of disagreement across these procedures, by probing a number of their underlying assumptions