Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Socio-economic Determinants of Multidimensional Poverty in Rural West Bengal: A Household Level Analysis

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Journal of Quantitative Economics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The present study tries to estimate the incidence, depth and severity of multidimensional poverty (MDP) along with the contributions of dimensions to MDP among the rural households using multi-stage random sampling method in West Bengal. We decompose the inequality of deprivation scores between and within different socio-economic, religious and ethnic groups. The factors affecting the probability of falling in multidimensional poverty is also explored here using logistic regression, and the regression results suggest that public infrastructure plays an essential role towards explaining the variations of MDP. The present study is expected to be helpful to the development planners for better understanding of the root causes of MDP among the rural households in West Bengal.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Rowntree (1901) defined poverty primarily as those families whose earnings are insufficient to meet the minimum necessities for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency. In the life-cycle of an individual poverty can be found by the sudden fluctuations in the income and employment of his father beside other family members. He defined the poverty line using work efficiency of individuals that, in turn, is related to biological requirements.

  2. A family with income less than one half the median family income can be defined as relatively poor (Fuchs 1967). Townsend (1974) has argued that relative poverty should incorporate objective conditions with ‘feelings of deprivation'.

  3. The biological approach was under attack due to difficulty in determining minimal nutritional requirements, which were varied internationally. Sukhatme (1981, Sukhatme and Paresh 1983) has argued that the energy requirements of an individual are not fixed and it varies between individuals (due to inter-individual genetic differences) and minimum calorie norms depends on age, sex, body weight, type of work, occupation, etc. The income or expenditure method identifies the poor as those who lack the purchasing power to meet a subsistence level of living. This technique entails the estimation of the poverty line, i.e., the minimum income needed to meet the basic needs and persons with money income or expenditure below this threshold line are regarded as poor (Rao 1977; Dandekar and Rath 1971; Bardhan et al. 1974; Deaton 1997). Since both spending and income are measured in money, the choice of the cut-off or poverty line is always somewhat arbitrary (HDR 1996).

  4. Capability refers to a person's or groups' freedom to promote valuable functioning. Or, in other words, the capability is a set of values of functioning, reflecting the person's freedom to lead the decent life (Sen 1992). By the term ‘Freedom', Sen (1999) has mentioned five kinds of ‘freedom'. These are political, economic facilities, social opportunities, transparency guarantees and reproductive securities. Basic capabilities refer to (a) leading a life free of avoidable morbidity (b) being informed and educated and (c) being well-nourished (Sen 1997a, b). A basic capability is a capability to enjoy a functioning that is defined as a general level and refers to a basic need (i.e., a capability to meet a basic need) or, in other words, a capability to avoid malnourishment, a capability to be educated and so on (Alkire 2002).

  5. The three variables in the capability poverty measure covers substantial ground—indication of nutrition and health for the population as a whole (measured by underweight children), access to reproductive health services and a concrete test of access to health services in general (measured by unattended trained health personnel) and basic educational attainment plus information on gender inequality (measured by female adult illiteracy). The index relating to capability poverty measure emphasizes critical areas where progress is needed must remain especially in poor countries (HDR 1996). Therefore, capability poverty measure (CPM) is defined as: \( \textit{CPM} = \frac{{P_{1} + P_{2} + P_{3} }}{3} \), where P1 = percentage of children under age six who are under-weight, P2 = percentage of births unattended by a trained health professional and P3 = percentage of adult women who are illiterate.

  6. Human Poverty Index, \( P(\alpha ) = \left[ {\frac{{w_{1} P_{1}^{\alpha } + w_{2} P_{2}^{\alpha } + w_{3} P_{3}^{\alpha } }}{{w_{1} + w_{2} + w_{3} }}} \right]^{{\frac{1}{\alpha }}} \), where \( P_{1} \) is the percentage of people who do not survive after age 40, \( P_{2} \) = percentage of adults who are illiterate and \( P_{3} = \frac{{P_{31} + P_{32} + P_{33} }}{3} \), P3 is a composite variables in which \( P_{31} \) = people without access to safe water (in percentage), \( P_{32} \) = people without access to health services (in percentage) and \( P_{33} \) = moderately and severely underweight children under five (in percentage); here, α is the order of the average (?).

  7. In the context of development and deprivation perspective, Kamdar and Basak (2005) has made a distinction between the output (and attainment) and input (or process) indicator. Output or attainment indicators reflect the status of the population in that particular dimension of development; for example, life expectancy is an outcome indicator of the health status of the population indicating the number of years a person is expected to survive at age one or birth. Access to health services is an input indicator or a process indicator as it contributes to higher life expectancy.

  8. The human poverty index for OECD countries (HDR 1998) measures deprivations in the same dimensions as the HPI for the developing countries and also captures social exclusion. Thus it reflects deprivations in four dimensions: (a) A long and healthy life—vulnerability to death at a relatively early age. The probability at birth of not staying alive to age 60 measures this. (b) Knowledge—exclusion from the world of reading and communications, as measured by the percentages of adults (aged 16–65) lacking functional literacy skills. (c) A decent standard of living—as measured by the percentage of people living below the income poverty line (50% of the median disposable household income). (d) Social exclusion—as measured by the rate of long-term unemployment (12 months or more).

  9. The health indicator is a percentage of people not expected to survive beyond age 40 (P1). The second index (P2) is comprised of two variables: illiteracy rate for the population in the age group 7 years and above and proportion of children in the age group 6–18 years not enrolled in the schools. The economic deprivation indicator (P3) is a composite of four parameters: percentage of people below poverty line (P31); proportion of children in the age group 12–23 months not fully vaccinated (P32); proportion of people living in kutchha houses (P33); and proportion of people have not been able to get access to safe drinking water, electricity and health facility (P34).

  10. Human Poverty Index, P(α) does satisfy some essential properties like homogeneity, substitutability, convexity but not decomposability; generally, P(α) cannot be considered as a head-count ratio (HCR). Following the endnote 6, if we assume P1 = P2 = P3 = P and α = 1, then and only then P(α) can be considered as HCR, but in reality, it is rarely happened (UNDP 1997).

  11. The Global Hunger Index (GHI) developed by International Food Policy Research Institute (IFRI) is a multidimensional statistical tool used to describe the starvation condition of different countries. It is released annually by IFPRI since 2006. The GHI is calculated by taking into account four indicators; these are (1) undernourished population (1/3rd weight), (2) child wasting (1/6th weight), (3) child stunting (1/6th weight) and (4) infant mortality rate (1/3rd weight). Stunting is defined as the deficiency in height about age reflecting chronic undernutrition; wasting means low weight about child's height reflecting acute malnutrition.

  12. A broad discussion of poverty in India among different socio-ethnic and religious groups can be found in Meenakshi et al. (2000), Panagariya (2008), Panagariya and Mukim (2013), Thorat (2006) and Thorat and Deubey (2012).

  13. The generalized entropy (GE) class of measure of inequality has some advantages over gini-coefficient; GE measure is sub-group decomposable, and it is distribution sensitive, and one can quickly reconcile between GE measure of inequality with Atkinson measure. Theil Index belongs to GE(α) measures of inequality for if α = 1. Therefore, following Cowell and Jenkins (1995) and Litchfield (1999), we can write the Theil Index [GE(1)] in m-group decomposable form as:

    $$ {\text{Theil}}\,{\text{Index}} = GE(1) = T = \sum\limits_{k = 1}^{m} {\left( {\frac{{n_{k} }}{n}\frac{{\bar{y}_{k} }}{{\bar{y}}}} \right)} T_{k} + \sum\limits_{k = 1}^{m} {\frac{{n_{k} }}{n}} \left( {\frac{{\bar{y}_{k} }}{{\bar{y}}}} \right)\ln \left( {\frac{{\bar{y}_{k} }}{{\bar{y}}}} \right). $$

    The within-group inequality and between-group inequality are captured by the first and second term of the above formula. Here m stands for a number of groups, nk be the population size of the kth group, n be the total population, \( \bar{y}_{k} \) means mean income (in our case, it is deprivation score) of the kth group, \( \bar{y} \) be the mean of the overall population. Theil Index [viz. GE(1)] of the kth group is represented by Tk.

  14. FGT(α) can be expressed as:

    $$ FGT(\alpha ) = \frac{{\sum\limits_{{x* > x_{i} }}^{{}} {(x* - x_{i} )^{\alpha } } }}{{n(x*)^{\alpha } }} = \frac{1}{n}\sum\limits_{{x* > x_{i} }} {\left( {\frac{{x* - x_{i} }}{x*}} \right)}^{\alpha } = \frac{1}{n}\sum\limits_{i = 1}^{n*} {\left( {\frac{{g_{i} }}{{x^{*} }}} \right)}^{\alpha } , $$
    (9)

    here n* be the number of poor people, x* be the threshold level of income used to determine poverty \( g_{i} = x^{*} - x_{i} \), and xi is the income of the ith poor. Equation (A1) can be expressed as:

    $$ FGT(\alpha ) = \frac{1}{n}\sum\limits_{i = 1}^{n*} {\left( {\frac{{g_{i} }}{{x^{*} }}} \right)}^{\alpha } = \frac{1}{n}\sum\limits_{i = 1}^{n*} {K_{i}^{\alpha } } , $$
    (10)

    here, \( K_{i} = \frac{{g_{i} }}{{x^{*} }} \)

    If incomes of the poor are arranged as \( x_{1} < x_{2} < \ldots x_{n* - 1} < x_{n*} \), therefore, FGT(α)1is defined as:

    $$ FGT(\alpha )_{1} = \frac{1}{n}\left( {\frac{{g_{1} }}{x*}} \right)^{\alpha } = \frac{1}{n}K_{1}^{\alpha } , $$
    (11)
    $$ {\text{thus}}{:}\,\frac{{FGT(\alpha )_{1} }}{FGT(\alpha )} = \frac{{\frac{1}{n}K_{1}^{\alpha } }}{{\frac{1}{n}\sum\limits_{i = 1}^{n*} {K_{i}^{\alpha } } }} = \frac{{K_{1}^{\alpha } }}{{K_{1}^{\alpha } + K_{2}^{\alpha } + \ldots K_{n*}^{\alpha } }}, $$
    (12)
    $$ {\text{Equation}}\,( 1 4)\,{\text{can}}\,{\text{be}}\,{\text{simplified}}\,{\text{as}}{:}\,\frac{{FGT(\alpha )_{1} }}{FGT(\alpha )} = \left[ {1 + \left( {\frac{{K_{2} }}{{K_{1} }}} \right)^{\alpha } + \left( {\frac{{K_{3} }}{{K_{1} }}} \right)^{\alpha } + \ldots \left( {\frac{{K_{n*} }}{{K_{1} }}} \right)^{\alpha } } \right]^{ - 1} . $$
    (13)

    Expanding (14) and taking the limit α → ∞ \( \frac{{FGT(\alpha )_{1} }}{FGT(\alpha )} = 1 \), this proves that FGT(α)1 = FGT(α). Here, FGT(α)1 stands for the poorest of the poor.

References

  • Alkire, Sabina, and James Foster. 2009. Counting and multidimensional poverty measurement. OPHI working paper 32. Oxford: University of Oxford.

  • Alkire, Sabina., and James Foster. 2010. Designing the Inequality-Adjusted Human Development Index. OPHI Working Paper 37. UK: University of Oxford.

  • Alkire, Sabina, and Maria Emma Santos. 2010. Acute multidimensional poverty: A new index for developing countries. OPHI working papers 38. Oxford: University of Oxford.

  • Alkire, Sabina. 2002. Valuing freedoms—Sen’s capability approach and poverty reduction, Indian edition. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Alkire, Sabina. 2007. Choosing dimensions: The capability approach and the multidimensional poverty (August). Working paper 88. Chronic Poverty Research Centre.

  • Bardhan, Pranab Kumar, and Thirukodikaval Nilakanta Srinivasan, 1974. Poverty and income distribution in India, Statistical Publishing Society, Calcutta.

  • Chandy, Laurence and Homi Kharas. 2014. What do new price data mean for the goal of ending extreme poverty? https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2014/05/05/what-do-new-price-data-mean-for-the-goal-of-ending-extreme-poverty/. Accessed Sept 2017.

  • Cowell, Frank Alan., and Stephen P. Jenkins. 1995. How much inequality can we explain? A methodology and an application to the United States. The Economic Journal 105 (429): 421–430.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dandekar, Vinayak Mahadeo, and N. Rath. 1971. Poverty in India. Economic and Political Weekly 6 (2): 1–27.

    Google Scholar 

  • Deaton, Angus. 1997. The analysis of household surveys: A microeconometric approach to development policy. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank. http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/593871468777303124/The-analysis-of-household-surveys-a-microeconometric-approach-to-development-policy. Accessed Sept 2017.

  • Duncan, Greg J., and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, (eds.). 1997. Consequences of growing up poor, 55–71. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. https://www.russellsage.org/publications/consequences-growing-poor-1. Accessed Sept 2017.

  • Foster, James Eric. 1984. On economic poverty: A survey of aggregate measures. Advances in Econometrics 3: 215-251.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fuchs, Victor Robert. 1967. Redefining poverty and redistributing income, national affairs. The Public Interest 8(5): 88–95. https://www.nationalaffairs.com/storage/app/uploads/public/58e/1a4/a48/58e1a4a48f37d449037283.pdf. Accessed Sept 2017.

  • Greene, William H. 2000. Econometric analysis , 4th ed. London: Pearson Education/Prentice Hall.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kamdar, Sangita, and Asoke Basak. 2005. Beyond the human development index: Preliminary notes on deprivation and inequality. Economic and Political Weekly 30 (34): 3759–3765.

    Google Scholar 

  • Krishnaji, N. 1997. Human poverty index: A critique. Economic and Political Weekly. 32 (35): 2202–2205.

    Google Scholar 

  • Litchfield, Julie A. 1999. Inequality: Methods and tools. Washington, D.C.: World Bank.

    Google Scholar 

  • Meenakshi, J.V., Ranjan Ray, and Souvik Gupta. 2000. Estimates of poverty for SC, ST, and female-headed households. Economic and Political Weekly 35 (31): 2748–2754.

    Google Scholar 

  • Narayan, Deepa, Raj Patel, Kai Schafft, Anne Rademacher, and Sarah Koch-Schulte. 2000. Voices of the poor: Can anyone hear us?. New York: World Bank/Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative. 2017. Global MPI. 2017. http://www.ophi.org.uk/multidimensional-poverty-index/global-mpi-2017/. Accessed Sept 2017.

  • Panagariya, Arvind, and Megha Mukim. 2013. A Comprehensive Analysis of Poverty in India. Policy Research Working Paper 6714. World Bank

  • Panagariya, Arvind. 2008. India: The emerging giant. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ranis, Gustav, Frances Stewart, and Alejandro Ramirez. 2000. Economic growth and human development. World Development 28 (2): 197–219.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rao, Vijayendra Kasturi Ranga Varadaraja. 1977. Nutritional norms by calorie intake and measurement of poverty. Bulletin of the International Statistical Institute. 47 (1): 645–654.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rippin, Nicole. 2009. The concept of multidimensional poverty: Accounting for dimensional poverty. Discussion paper no. 179:1–27, Ibero-America Institute for Economic Research.

  • Rowntree, Benjamin Seebohm. 1901. Poverty: A study of town life. Basingstoke: Macmillan Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Roy, Kajari, and Sushil Kumar Haldar. 2010. Measuring poverty and socio-economic deprivation inequalities in India at the sub-national level. Asia Pacific Social Science Review 10 (1): 59–84.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sen, Amartya Kumar, and Sudhir Anand. 1997. Concept of human development and poverty: A multidimensional perspective. In Poverty and human development papers 1997. 1–20, New York: United Nations Development Programme.

  • Sen, Amartya Kumar. 1997a. From income inequality to economic inequality. Southern Economic Journal 64 (2): 383–401.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sen, Amartya Kumar. 1981. Poverty and famines: An essay on entitlement and deprivation. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sen, Amartya Kumar. 1983. Accounts, actions, and values: Objectivity of social science. In Social theory and political practice, ed. Chris Lloyd. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sen, Amartya Kumar. 1985. Commodities and capabilities. Amsterdam: North-Holland

    Google Scholar 

  • Sen, Amartya Kumar. 1990. Development as capability expansion. In Human development and the international development strategy, ed. K. Griffin and J. Knight. London: MacMillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sen, Amartya Kumar. 1992. Inequality reexamined. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sen, Amartya Kumar. 1997. Poverty in the human development perspective: Concept and measurement. In Human development report 1997, 15–23. UNDP.

  • Sen, Amartya Kumar. 1999. Development as freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Streeten, Paul. 1994. Human development means and ends. American Economic Association Papers and Proceedings 84 (2): 85–97.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sukhatme, Pandurang Vasudeo, and Paresh Narain.1983. Intra-individual variation in energy requirements and its implication. Indian Journal of Medical Research 78: 857–65

    Google Scholar 

  • Sukhatme, Pandurang Vasudeo 1981. On measurement of poverty. Economic and Political Weekly 16 (32): 1318–1324.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thorat, Sukhadeo. 2006. Paying the social debt. Economic & Political Weekly 41(24): 2432–2435.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thorat, Sukhadeo, and Amaresh Dubey. 2012. Has growth been socially inclusive during 1993- 94–2009-10? Economic Political Weekly, 47(10): 43-54.

    Google Scholar 

  • Townsend, Peter. 1974. Poverty as relative deprivation: Resources and style of living. In Poverty, inequality and class structure, ed. D. Wedderburn, 15–41. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • United Nations Development Programme and Government of India. 2004. West Bengal human development report. 2004. http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/west-bengal-human-development-report-2004. Accessed sept 2017.

  • United Nations Development Programme. 1996. Human development report 1996. http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/human-development-report-1996. Accessed Sept 2017.

  • United Nations Development Programme. 1997. Human development report 1997. http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/human-development-report-1997. Accessed Sept 2017.

  • United Nations Development Programme. 1998. Human development report 1998. http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/human-development-report-1998. Accessed Sept 2017.

  • World Bank. 2002. World development report 2002. http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/228361468140407049/pdf/multi0page.pdf. Accessed Sept 2017.

Download references

Acknowledgements

We are thankful to the Centre for Advanced Studies, Department of Economics, Jadavpur University for Funding the Project entitled ‘Incidence, Depth, Severity and Determinants of Multidimensional Poverty among Different Socio-Ethnic Groups: A Case Study of Selected Districts of Rural West Bengal’.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, 700032, India

    Poulomi Roy, Soma Ray & Sushil Kumar Haldar

Authors
  1. Poulomi Roy
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Soma Ray
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Sushil Kumar Haldar
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Poulomi Roy.

Appendix

Appendix

See Table 6.

Table 6 Summary table of key variables explaining multidimensional deprivation score
Full size table

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Roy, P., Ray, S. & Haldar, S.K. Socio-economic Determinants of Multidimensional Poverty in Rural West Bengal: A Household Level Analysis. J. Quant. Econ. 17, 603–622 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40953-018-0137-4

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40953-018-0137-4

Keywords

JEL Classification

Search

Navigation