Several tests of targeting accuracy of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREG) focusing on shares of participants by poverty status, their duration of participation, and earnings from it are used. The analysis is based on primary household data collected from three India states,...

The impact of information on corruption and effective implementation is Janus faced. In this paper we use household level data to address the issue of corruption in the NREG program in three states: Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra. We discover that at the entry level, information about...

Using primary data collected during 2007-08 we examine the nutritional status with respect to the two macronutrients (calories and protein) as well as various micronutrients of rural households in three Indian states: Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan. We find that, by and large, there...

This paper measures the vulnerability of households in rural India, based upon the ICRISAT panel survey. We employ both ex ante and ex post measures of vulnerability. The latter are decomposed into aggregate and idiosyncratic risks and poverty components. Our decomposition shows that...

We discuss characteristics of the spatial distribution of poverty and calorie and protein deficiency in India. Two units of analysis are considered - states and NSS-defined agro-climatic zones. The data used are the NSS Expenditure Surveys of the 43rd, 50th and 55th rounds. Results on stochastic...

The contribution of the present paper is threefold. First, we formally test whether the effect of calorie deprivation on wages is more significant/higher for the lower quantiles of workers. In the extant literature this is established through non-linear terms in the wage equation. A more...

This paper, a sequel to our earlier paper on Rajasthan, presents results on the participation of rural workers in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme based on a pilot survey of three villages in the Chittoor district, Andhra Pradesh, India. These villages are Kaligiri, Obulayyapale...