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Changes in Living Standards in Villages in India 1975-2004: Revisiting the ICRISAT Village Level Studies

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Relation http://oar.icrisat.org/4804/
 
Title Changes in Living Standards in Villages in India 1975-2004: Revisiting the ICRISAT Village Level Studies
 
Creator Badiani, R
Dercon, S
Krishnan, P
Rao, K P C
 
Subject Agriculture-Farming, Production, Technology, Economics
 
Description This paper examines changes in living conditions in the six villages in Andhra Pradesh and
Maharashtra, initially surveyed during 1975-84. We link the original Village Level Survey
(VLS) households to a new survey in the villages conducted during 2001-04 and further
extensive survey work in 2005-06, including tracking survey of all individuals ever
interviewed in the original VLS. Despite issues related to attrition and changes in the survey
instruments, we find that monetary welfare indicators (such as incomes, assets, consumption
and poverty), and non monetary indicators of well-being (such as basic literacy, education
and health outcomes) have improved considerably. We find the considerable attrition rates
observed can be linked to within-household relational variables such as gender, relationship
to the head and birth order. Migrants have experienced faster welfare improvements than
non-migrants, but more analysis is needed to confirm whether this is due to their initial
characteristics or due to their migration. Finally, we explore the correlates of consumption
and income growth, and changes in poverty. We find that consumption growth is linked to
initial households characteristics, in particular the presence of high literacy in the household,
and of young children, especially boys, in the baseline year (1983) is strongly correlated with
growth. Other assets, such as land, have a negligible impact, suggesting that labour and
human capital have been instrumental for growth. Poverty declined in all villages, but
especially in the Mahbubnagar villages in Andhra Pradesh. Labour endowments and literacy
appear to have been crucial. Surprisingly, lower caste groups have experienced faster
poverty declines, although this effect is largely confined to Mahbubnagar in Andhra Pradesh.
 
Publisher Chronic Poverty Research Centre
 
Date 2007
 
Type Book
PeerReviewed
 
Format application/pdf
 
Language en
 
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Identifier http://oar.icrisat.org/4804/1/WP85_Badiani_et_al.pdf
Badiani, R and Dercon, S and Krishnan, P and Rao, K P C (2007) Changes in Living Standards in Villages in India 1975-2004: Revisiting the ICRISAT Village Level Studies. CPRC Working Paper (85). Chronic Poverty Research Centre, Manchester, UK. ISBN 1-904049-84-2