The thesis delves into questions of measurement of poverty and inequality and evaluates a hypothesis behind a policy that impacts democratic rights of millions of individuals in India. The first two papers are based on the Global Consumption and Income Project (GCIP). They describe the...

We investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on income levels, poverty, and inequality in both the immediate aftermath and during the uneven recovery until December 2021 using high-frequency household survey data from India. We find that the average household incomes dropped sharply during...

Intra-household inequality continues to remain a neglected corner despite renewed focus on income and wealth inequality. Using the LIS micro data, we present evidence that this neglect is Equivalent to ignoring up to a third of total inequality. For a wide range of countries and over four...

Economic development and inequality is known to have an impact on health outcomes. We show this to be true in India where we study the effect of economic status on under and over nutrition. Inequality is measured using income or assets and we show that both matter for malnutrition. We find women...

While wealth inequality has attracted attention in the recent inequality literature, such inequalities within the most elementary social unit -- the household -- remain neglected. We develop an empirical framework for measuring intra-household wealth inequality. Using unique individual-level...

Intra-household inequality continues to remain a neglected corner despite renewed focus on income and wealth inequality. Using the LIS micro data, we present evidence that this neglect is equivalent to ignoring up to a third of total inequality. For a wide range of countries and over four...

Emerging evidence suggests that COVID-19 has amplified existing gender divisions that disadvantage women. What is the appropriate unit of analysis to study the gendered impact of a pandemic? The study of gendered inequality - especially labor market opportunities and outcomes - has for the large...

We present trends in intra-household gender inequality for forty five different countries across a four decade period (1973{2016), using global micro-data from 2.85 million households. Intra-household gender inequality has declined by 20% in the four decades that we study. However, current...

Using newly comprehensive data and tools from the Global Consumption and Income Project or CGIP, covering most of the world and five decades, we present a portrait of the changing global distribution of consumption and income and discuss its implications for our understanding of inequality,...