Decomposition of poverty disparity across social groups in rural India Mondal Snehasis1, Das Panchanan2,* 1Research Scholar, Department of Economics, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, West Bengal, India 2Professor, Department of Economics, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, West Bengal, India *Corresponding author email id: panchanandaswbes@gmail.com
JEL Classification: C02, O15, O53 Online published on 17 May, 2022. Abstract This study finds out the possible sources of increasing poverty disparity between social groups while absolute poverty declined in each group in rural India by developing a methodology to decompose relative poverty gap between two social groups by following Massoumi and Mahmoudi (2013). It is observed that absolute poverty declined at the highest rate among the Non-SC/ST (Other) people as compared to SCs and STs. The major component of overall poverty disparity is the between-group disparity. It rose at a faster rate since the initiation of reform measures in India. Decomposition of poverty changes shows that the growth effect was stronger than the distribution effect in reducing poverty incidence for all social groups. Further, higher growth effect among non-SC/ST relative to ST raised poverty disparity between non-SC/ST and ST. Faster growth in the Indian economy during the post-reform period had the least effect on poverty for extreme marginalised groups. Top Keywords Poverty, Inequality, Decomposition, Rural, Social Groups. Top |