Macroeconomic crises and poverty monitoring: a case study for India

Gaurav Datt and Martin Ravallion

No 20, FCND discussion papers from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Abstract: Assessment of the welfare impacts of low-frequency events, such as macroeconomic crises and stabilizations, are often confounded by sampling and nonsampling errors that generate fluctuations in household survey-based welfare indicators; they are also limited by our ability to explain fluctuations in terms of other available data. Basing policy on short-term movements in welfare indicators can thus be hazardous. There was a sharp increase in India's poverty measures in the aftermath of the mid-1991 crisis and the ensuing stabilization reforms. However, only one-tenth of the increase in measured poverty is explicable in terms of the variables one would expect to transmit the shock. Poverty measures soon returned to their pre-reform levels, belying the notion of a reforms-induced structural break.

Keywords: poverty; welfare economics; macroeconomics; assessment; India; Southern Asia; Oceania (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1996
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Macroeconomic Crises and Poverty Monitoring: A Case Study for India (1997)
Working Paper: Macroeconomic crises and poverty monitoring: a case study for India (1996)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fpr:fcnddp:20

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