This paper undertakes an assessment of the evolution of inequality in the distribution of consumption expenditure in India over the last quarter-century, from 1983 to 2009-10, employing data available in the quinquennial 'thick' surveys of the National Sample Survey Office. We find that...

In this paper, we convey the concept of first-order dominance (FOD) with particular focus on applications to multidimensional population welfare comparisons. We give an account of the fundamental equivalent definitions of FOD, illustrated with simple numerical examples. An implementable method...

What is the relationship between inequality and growth? This question has occupied and fascinated social scientists for more than a century. This article critically reviews the recent empirical and theoretical literature on the complex interplay between inequality and economic growth. Inequality...

Using illustrations from research on inequality, this paper offers evidence on the strengths of 'behavioural synthesis', i.e. the reconciliation between neoclassical and behavioural economics. We compare how theoretical models of absolute and relative inequality have evolved from assumptions of...

Our hypothesis is that Nigeria is going through a process of economic polarization. An analysis of this type is new for Nigeria; the limited availability of comparable data has hindered an investigation that requires data series not too close in time. The present paper tries to overcome this...

This paper reviews the evidence on the 'inclusiveness' of the growth in consumption expenditure that has occurred in India over the last four decades or so. The notion of dynamic inclusiveness is framed in terms of imagined normative allocations of the inter-temporal product of growth, as...

India addressed the requirement for pro-poor service delivery in rural regions by introducing decentralization and affirmative action policies. In order to measure the social preferences of local decision makers, we conducted field experiments which simulated the selection of needy beneficiaries...

This paper demonstrates that the property of 'replication invariance', generally considered to be an innocuous requirement for the extension of fixed-population poverty comparisons to variable-population contexts, is incompatible with other plausible variable- and fixed-population axioms.

The United Nations Millennium Declaration commits to halving extreme poverty between 2000 and 2015. The South African government has set a goal of halving poverty by 2014, although the meaning of this goal has not yet been defined. This article specifies government's stated target of halving...

Using the Viet Nam Access to Resources Household Survey (VARHS) with a panel of households present from 2008 to 2016, the study investigates the impact of social capital on household vulnerability. The empirical results indicate that both commune shocks and household shocks are associated with...