Transformation of the countryside from agrarian subsistence economy to non-farm monetised economy is propagated as a precursor of growth and development and involves shifting of labour from farming to off-farm activities. India has started its journey in this path but has a long way to go....

Pakistan is on its way to achieving the targets of the fifth Millennium Development Goal in terms of reducing the maternal mortality ratio by three-quarters between 1990 and 2015. However, the rate of decline needs to speed up over the next decade as Pakistan has a high Maternal Mortality Ratio...

Relative deprivation (RD), also known as relative poverty , an idea implicitly put forward by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations and formally conceptualized by Runciman (1966), refers to the discontent people feel when they compare their positions to others and realize that others in the group...

The paper examines the appropriate domain of the Welfare State by exploring the areas in which free enterprise fails to provide adequate welfare state services. The paper outlines a simple coherent strategy for formulating government welfare state policy by identifying the relevant market...

In India, Economic Reforms has been explicitly started in 1991. Even with some controversy in the initial period now it intruded in almost all the sectors. At present days economic reforms is mingled with every sphere of economic activities. But the effects of economic reforms are highly...

Poverty is multidimensional in nature. Poverty is associated not only with insufficient income or consumption but also with insufficient outcomes with respect to health, nutrition, and literacy and deficient social relations, insecurity, and low self-esteem and powerlessness. Since poverty is a...

Despite the Government of Indonesia’s commitment to address human security as stated in its ambitious medium-term development plan and the Millennium Development Goals, poverty in its multidimensionality remain a major issue in Indonesia as a significant proportion of the Indonesian population...

We evaluate whether and how the persistence of inequality and the presence of inequality traps carry over the persistence of poverty and possible aggregate economic inefficiencies. We propose a microeconomic formalization of one possible definition of poverty and of the behaviour of poor and...

This paper studies the impact of income inequality on fiscal conservatism when an increase in inequality affects the bottom portion of income distribution. It is argued that, contrary to what is generally assumed in the economic literature, inequality will then be associated with less, rather...