The table alongside shows the multi-dimensional headcount ratio (measures proportion of people who experience multiple deprivations), intensity of poverty (average proportion of weighted deprivations the multi-dimensionally poor people experience), the multi-dimensional poverty index corresponding to each state based on standard of living and number of people in each state.
Analysis and Interpretation:
Access to electricity, good sanitation facilities, environment-friendly cooking fuel, drinking water, housing, and durable assets is necessary not only for leading a better quality of life but also for the better health status of the individuals. This, in turn, increases the ability of individuals to participate in the labor market and earn higher incomes. Higher incomes feed back to the standard of living and improve the quality of life of the individuals. However, on the flip side, it could be viewed as a vicious loop wherein a poor quality of life negatively impacts the ability to supply labor in the market, further depriving them of a decent quality of life. Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Chhattisgarh emerged as the poorest states because of the standard of living. The multi-dimensional headcount ratio indicates that a very high percentage of the population is multi-dimensionally poor in these states. On the other hand, we find that Nagaland, Delhi, Chandigarh, Mizoram, Punjab, and Manipur are among the least poor states. A closer look at Table 1 shows that the number of individuals sampled from states like Nagaland, Chandigarh, Mizoram, etc., are extremely low relative to other states. As a result, comparing states like Himachal Pradesh and Nagaland might be problematic.
There exists a huge labor migration problem in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, which are among the most impoverished states based on our calculation. The migrant workers from Bihar migrate to rural areas of the more prosperous states of Punjab and Haryana. There were estimated to be 5 million laborers who migrated from Bihar to work in other parts of the country. This is because of a rise in labor demand in other parts of the country and a lack of non-farm employment opportunities for people living in Bihar. However, migrant laborers live in extremely unsafe and poorly maintained places while scrounging for casual work opportunities. There slowly was a move from rural-rural to rural-urban migration as people from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh now search for employment opportunities in the informal sector. In accordance with the Harris-Todaro viewpoint, the formal sector cannot absorb everyone seeking a job, and everyone in Bihar doesn’t want to stay in agriculture. For migrant laborers, working in the informal sector generally symbolizes an upward movement on the path to own growth. Thus, the informal sector is expanding initially as the rural-urban migration increases but their living conditions don’t improve as quickly.
Intuitively, there is bound to be some degree of correlation between variables explaining the standard of living. For instance, lower access to electricity restricts access to assets that work on electricity.
Electrification of households hasn’t moved in tandem with Rural Electricity Supply Technology Mission launched in 2003 (followed by Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana launched in April 2005) for some states. A combination of studies by TERI and other universities highlight the reasons behind the low penetration of connections in electrified villages, including financial constraints, misconceptions, doubts about the adequacy of electricity services, and unclear application procedures. The State Governments were handed the task of household electrification under the RGGVY scheme. For instance, Table 2 shows that in Assam, approximately 6.49% of households don’t have access to electricity. This is a result of poor implementation of the program by the state government of Assam, which the central government launched. The state reported the slowest increase in electrified rural households among the north-eastern states (except Nagaland) between 2001 and 2016.
In the context of the hilly (or mountain) regions, the climate necessitates access to permanent shelter to protect oneself in extreme conditions and drinking water to maintain body temperature. Uttarakhand performs poorly in these aspects, with 4.05% of people not having access to clean water and 7.13% not having access to proper shelters compared to Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir (access to proper shelters is worse for Himachal Pradesh). Uttarakhand’s MDP index is the worst among the three states. It mainly faces the problem of working labor. Regarding the unavailability of clean fuels available to households, we find that Jharkhand, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh are among the states with more than 10% of people deprived of clean fuels. According to WHO, indoor smoke can be approximately 100 times higher than the acceptable PM 2.5, putting the health of women and children at greater risk as they stay close to the stove for longer durations. HIV-unaffected children below the age of five are at an increased risk of pneumonia because of inhaling soot particles. WHO pegged the estimated figure at 45% for pneumonia-related deaths caused by inhaling soot particles among children under five. Although between 2000 and 2015, the estimated pneumonia-related cases among HIV-unaffected children below the age of five have fallen, the incidence of such cases continue to be high in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Madhya Pradesh (in accordance with the results we obtained).
The culture of poverty theory suggested by Lewis is defined as a set of beliefs and values passed from generation to generation. It indicated that poverty is created by the transmission, over generations, of a set of beliefs, values, and skills that are socially generated (Lewis, 1968). Ultimately, the implication is the persistence of poverty as the culture of poverty gets passed on from generation to generation. A closer look at Table 1 shows that the values of the multi-dimensional headcount ratio for Kerala and Uttarakhand are comparable. However, there is a wide difference in the value of their respective MDP indices. This theory can be tied to the condition in Uttarakhand in some respects. Uttarakhand has done well in terms of growth and development compared to its neighboring state Uttar Pradesh. The multi-dimensional headcount ratio and intensity of poverty are much lower for Uttarakhand, indicating a better standard of living. Even though Uttarakhand is endowed with natural resources and generates a significant stream of revenue from tourism, the growth effects have been unequal to a large extent. Many areas of the state are remote and difficult to access, rendering the impact of many policies of the State Government ineffective. This slows down economic activity in these regions and cuts them off opportunities to improve their standard of living. Kerala stands out among other states and provides an array of basic health benefits to its citizens. It offered a compelling example of how the proper implementation of meaningful reforms can reduce the intensity of poverty. Various metrics of quality of life have improved for the state. As a result, despite having a mediocre GNP, it boasted a life expectancy of nearly 70 years. This has been possible due to the well-thought-out equitable redistribution of the limited resources the state did have. This directly improved the basic standard of living in the state. This explains the high difference in the MDP index of the two states.
Appendix:
Index Calculated: Living Standards Index of MDP
Datasets Used: DS0001 (individual level data) and DS0002 (household level data)
Definition of the component variables: (each component has 1/18 weightage)
1. Electricity:
Definition: The household has no electricity
Question(s) used- Does this house have electricity? [FU1]
Assign 1 if household doesn’t have electricity
Assign 0 otherwise
2. Sanitation:
Definition: The household does not have access to improved sanitation (according to Sustainable Development Goal guidelines), or it is improved but shared with other households. A household is considered to have access to improved sanitation if it has some type of flush toilet or latrine or ventilated improved pit or composting toilet that is not shared. When a survey uses a different definition of adequate sanitation, the survey report is followed.
Question(s) used-Does the household have a toilet of its own? [SA4]
Assign 1 if no facility belonging to household (or Open fields)
Assign 0 otherwise
3. Drinking Water:
Definition: The household does not have access to an improved source of drinking water (according to Sustainable Development Goal guidelines), or safe drinking water is at least a 30-minute walk from home, roundtrip. A household is considered to have access to an improved source of drinking water if the source is piped water, a public tap, a borehole or pump, a protected well, a protected spring or rainwater. When a survey uses a different definition of safe drinking water, the survey report is followed.
Question(s) used- What is the main source of water for drinking in your house? [WA1a]
How long it would take to walk to the source of water [One way]? [WA4a]
Assign 1 if household's source of drinking water is: open well, river, canal, stream, pond, others or if the source of safe drinking water is more than 30 minutes away
Assign 0 otherwise
4. Housing:
Definition: At least one of the household’s three dwelling elements—floor, walls or roof—is made of inadequate materials—that is, the floor is made of natural materials and/or the walls and/or the roof are made of natural or rudimentary materials. The floor is made of natural materials such as mud, clay, earth, sand or dung; the dwelling has no roof or walls; the roof or walls are constructed using natural materials such as cane, palm, trunks, sod, mud, dirt, grass, reeds, thatch, bamboo or sticks or rudimentary materials such as carton, plastic or polythene sheeting, bamboo or stone with mud, loosely packed stones, uncovered adobe, raw or reused wood, plywood, cardboard, unburnt brick, or canvas or tent.
Question(s) used- PREDOMINANT WALL TYPE? [HQ4]
PREDOMINANT ROOF TYPE? [HQ5]
PREDOMINANT FLOOR TYPE? [HQ6]
Assign 1 if the predominant wall or roof type of grass, thatch, mud, unburnt bricks, plastic, wood or the predominant floor type is of mud
Assign 0 otherwise
5. Cooking Fuel:
Definition: The household cooks with dung, wood, charcoal or coal.
Question(s) used- Kerosene? For what purpose is it mainly used? [FU10]
LPG? For what purpose is it mainly used? [FU11]
Assign 1 if the household cooks with dung cake, firewood/twigs, crop residuals, coal or charcoal
Assign 0 otherwise
Note: Here, combination is defined as a category when the household uses a fuel for multiple purposes. I assign 0 to the households that use a combination in the LPG and Kerosene category as they do have access to these fuels. Thus, it won’t be right to classify these households as deprived.
6. Assets:
Definition: The household does not own a car or truck and does not own more than one of the following assets: radio, television, telephone, computer, animal cart, bicycle, motorbike or refrigerator.
Variables(s) used- CG4, CG8, CG9, CG10, CG16, CG18, CG21, CG24, CG25, FM40D, MM1M, MM1W, MM1C
Assign 1 if the household does not own a car and does not own more than one of the following assets: radio, black and white television/colour television, telephone, laptop/computer, animal cart, cycle/bicycle, motorcycle/scooter or refrigerator.
Assign 0 otherwise
Definitions Source: UNDP Document
Citations:
Ray, Debraj. Development Economics. Princeton University Press, 2015.
Baiju, K.C, and Shibu Sivaraman. Multidimensional Poverty among Social Groups in Kerala: Incidence, Intensity and Disparity. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018.
Baisantri, Jagadish Prasad. “Problems of Labour Migration in Bihar.” International Journal of Scientific Research in Multidisciplinary Studies, vol. 5, no. 9, 2019, pp. 70-74,
https://www.isroset.org/pub_paper/IJSRMS/10-IJSRMS-02646.pdf. Accessed 4 Dec 2022.
Bhandari, Laveesh, and Minakshi Chakraborty. “Spatial Poverty in Uttarakhand.” Live Mint, 8 Dec 2014, https://www.livemint.com/. Accessed 4 December 2022.
“Growth and Success in Kerala – The Yale Review of International Studies.” The Yale Review of International Studies, 11 November 2013, http://yris.yira.org/essays/1150. Accessed 4 December 2022.
“How do cooking fuels impact health, equality and climate?” The World Economic Forum, 27 October 2021, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/10/polluting-cooking-fuels-deaths-women-climate/. Accessed 4 December 2022.
Palit, Debajit. “Electrification and last mile connectivity in Assam.” TERI, 2 May 2016, https://www.teriin.org/opinion/electrification-and-last-mile-connectivity-assam. Accessed 4 December 2022.
Wahl, Brian, et al. “National, regional, and state-level pneumonia and severe pneumonia morbidity in children in India: modelled estimates for 2000 and 2015.” NCBI, 19 August 2020, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7457699/. Accessed 4 December 2022.
Please find the stata do file below: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1bBWvnIdn6Ezo8eimKGHr8O_dmpZIMH1Y?usp=share_link
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