What should government prioritize for the upliftment of the poor in India: access to credit or economic growth?

Atul Mehta and Joysankar Bhattacharya

International Review of Public Administration, 2022, vol. 27, issue 2, 129-146

Abstract: The present work provides a comprehensive analysis of the effect of two prominent channels of financial-sector development (FSD)—economic growth and access to credit—on the poor in India. Employing panel data analysis for a sample of 15 major Indian states for the period 1999–2000 to 2011–2012, we provide empirical evidence for the effect of the two channels of FSD on poverty ratio, poverty gap ratio, and squared poverty gap in India. The results indicate that while access to credit and growth have reduced poverty and poverty gap in India, it has disproportionately benefitted the population living closer to the poverty line resulting in increased inequality among the poor. Further, while bank credit has a greater beneficial effect on the poor, it also has a greater detrimental effect on the poorest of the poor. The robustness check confirms the validity of the obtained results.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/12294659.2022.2071538 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rrpaxx:v:27:y:2022:i:2:p:129-146

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RRPA20

DOI: 10.1080/12294659.2022.2071538

Access Statistics for this article

International Review of Public Administration is currently edited by Ralph Brower

More articles in International Review of Public Administration from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().