Perspectives on Poverty in India

Acknowledgments This book was prepared by a team led by Peter Lanjouw and Rinku Murgai (principal coauthors), under the overall guidance of Ernesto May, N. Roberto Zagha, and Miria Pigato. Core team members include Tara Vishwanath and Nobuo Yoshida, on poverty map estimation and analysis; Ericka Rascon, on poverty map analysis and inequality; Jishnu Das and Puja Vasudeva Dutta, on nonincome dimensions of poverty; and Maitreyi Das and Soumya Kapoor, on social exclusion. Pinaki Joddar provided research assistance. Administrative support was provided by Shiny Jaison, Rita Soni, and Jyoti Sriram. This report has been prepared alongside a parallel World Bank report on poverty and social exclusion in India led by Maitreyi Das. The two reports have a few common team members and often drew on common material.

We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the United Kingdom Department for International Development World Bank trust fund to carry out background research. Background papers prepared for the book include works by the following: Gaurav Datt and Martin Ravallion, on the relationship between poverty reduction and growth; Angus Deaton (Professor, Princeton University), on price trends in India and their implications for measuring poverty; Himanshu (Assistant Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University), on nonfarm employment; Amaresh Dubey (Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University), on estimates of poverty and inequality from the 2004–05 India Human Development Survey; Benjamin Crost (University of California, Berkeley), Alain de Janvry (Professor, University of California, Berkeley), and Elisabeth Sadoulet (Professor, University of California, Berkeley), on income disparities in India; Stefan Dercon (Professor, University of Oxford) and Sonya Krutikova (University of Oxford), on welfare dynamics, using International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics data; Devesh Kapur (Director, Center for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania) and Jeffrey Witsoe (Visiting Scholar, Center for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania), on a case study of migration from rural Bihar; and Maitreyi Das, Gillett Hall (Visiting Professor, xiii