India - Achievements and challenges in reducing poverty
Florestal, Ketleen | Cooper, Robb
This report builds on the analysis contained in the Bank's first poverty assessment for India, which concluded: both growth and redistributive policies played a role in reducing poverty over much of the 1970s and 1980s; while more rapid growth led to significant declines in poverty, the prevailing agricultural, industrial, and labor regulations diluted the effect of growth on poverty reduction; and there was a need to protect poverty programs likely to suffer expenditure cuts, and which impacted those unable to benefit from the growth process. It uses data from the 1993-94 national five-year survey (the most recent) to provide a stronger empirical underpinning of the central role of growth over distributive policies for poverty reduction, and to better understand the effect of past development policies on the incidence of poverty, and the important role played by endowments in human capital and physical resources in reducing poverty. After profiling the poor (Chapter 1), the report looks at the longterm, focusing on the determinants of persistent chronic poverty, to inform public policy design. Chapter 2 recognizes, however, that transient poverty due to unforeseen income fluctuations is just as important and is the basis justifying effective safety nets. While this report is largely concerned with rural poverty, its analysis and recommendations may be relevant for small cities in urban areas. The annexes discuss poverty measurement and village poverty.
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