Composite indices are widely used in Development Economics and can often be highly influential. Yet most remain controversial owing to inter alia the arbitrary selection of component weights. Several studies have proposed testing the robustness of rankings generated by composite indices with...

This paper focuses on the methodology by which India's 2002 Below the Poverty Line (BPL) census data identify the poor and construct a BPL headcount. Using the BPL 2002 methodology and NFHS (National Family Health Survey) data, it identifies which rural families would have been considered BPL...