December 1997 - In rural China, those in the poorest wealth decile are the least well-insured, with 40 percent of an income shock being passed on to current consumption. By contrast, consumption by the richest third of households is protected from almost 90 percent of an income shock. Jalan and...

The paper provides new measures of global poverty that take seriously the idea of relative-income comparisons but also acknowledge a deep identification problem when the latent norms defining poverty vary systematically across countries. Welfare-consistent measures are shown to be bounded below...

India's 2005 National Rural Employment Guarantee Act creates a justiciable 'right to work' by promising up to 100 days of wage employment per year to all rural households whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work. Work is provided in public works projects at the stipulated...

The paper examines feminist politics in India and the various issues with which they have been engaged. The two issues that divide women and inhibit alliances among the women’s movements are the Uniform Civil Code, and the reservation of seats for women in Parliament and state legislatures....

Affirmative action has enabled the representation of women in panchayats and enhanced their political status in local government. While they now possess authority through being incumbents of elective positions, this has not been translated into power (i.e. the ability to actually effect...

This paper examines the dynamic relationship between fiscal deficits, money supply, and price level in India during the period 1960-61 to 1999-2000. Using vector autoregression (VAR) econometric methodology, which allows variables to be treated as potentially endogenous, the study finds that...

While increasing income inequality in China has been commented on and studied extensively, relatively little analysis is available on inequality in other dimensions of human development. Using data from different sources, this paper presents some basic facts on the evolution of spatial...

The issue of small and declining health sector financing by the central and state governments in India is addressed by the launching of National Rural Health Mission in 2005-06. Bottom up planning starting with village as unit used as the main strategy of NRHM to meet the region specific health...

Drawing on empirical data from four gram panchayas in Orissa the paper examines the 'representation' of elected representatives-more particularly those of disadvantaged categories-by exploring their participation in the governance process, responsiveness towards the interst of their...

Structure as well as operation of land market in Less Developed Economies are complex and defy general expectations about the behaviour of market. Our paper on land market is an attempt towards theoretically examining various issues related to the functioning of land market in a tribal economy...