Multi dimensional Index reduction under the NDA is flawed
Multi dimensional Poverty Index reduction under the NDA is flawed
बहुआयामी गरीबी सूचकांक अभाव से लड़ने में राष्ट्रीय जनतांत्रिक गठबंधन की सफलता को बढ़ा-चढ़ाकर पेश करता है
An ability to live a healthy life, for example, is not necessarily related to affluence as it could result in obesity and vulnerability to non-communicable diseases.
being healthy, require
a nourishing diet and physical exercise. Professor Sen has, however, resisted aggregation of concepts such as capabilities into an overall measure of well-being as he believes that each capability is important in itself.
The MPI story
Unfortunately, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) measure human development with uniform weights of the three components:
🍁health,
🍁education
🍁and standard of living
🍁and their sub-indices.
NITI Aayog and the UNDP released recently a National Multidimensional Poverty Index/MPI:
1 A Progress Review 2023, also replicated in the UNDP Report,
Making Our Future: New Directions for Human Development in Asia and the Pacific, released on November 7, 2023
2 Hence, these reports suffer from the same flaws as the UNDP human development index:
🍁aggregation with uniform weighting.
Astonishingly, the MPI 2023 estimates
1 show a near-halving of India’s national MPI value and a decline from 24.85% to 14.96% between 2015-16 and 2019-21.
2 This reduction of 9.89 percentage points says that about 135.5 million people have exited poverty between 2015-16 and 2019-21.
3 average deprivation हानि या कमी among the people living in multidimensional poverty, reduced from 47.14% to 44.39%.
लेकिन इसको लेकर क्या चिंताएं हैं
1 But these estimates — especially the rapid reductions in MPI — cannot be taken at face value for various reasons.
2 Indeed, these are misleading and ill-informed.
3 First, the MPI relies upon National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 4 and 5, which are not detailed enough for its estimation.
4 Moreover, NFHS 5 is blocked as its estimate of open defecation contradicted खण्डन exaggerated अतिशयोक्तिपूर्ण official claim of its complete elimination.
5 In fact, an eminent demographer, who led NFHS 5 was suspended., while the survey was blocked for its alleged unreliability, NITI Aayog and the UNDP had no qualms हिचक about using it.
6 Ideally, NFHS 4 and 5 should have been combined with the 75th Round of the NSS on household consumption expenditure.
leaked poverty estimates indicated a rise
Unfortunately, this was abandoned too, as leaked poverty estimates indicated a rise.
COVID-19 pandemic in 2020-21 और इसका असर
1 Millions lost their livelihoods, thousands died in reverse migration and from a lack of access to vaccines and medical care.
2 In fact, as a consequence of this epidemic, there was a huge economic shock from which the Indian economy has been struggling to recover.
3 To illustrate, GDP growth has declined from 8% in 2015-16 to 3.78 % in 2019-20 and slumped -6.60 in 2020-21, as also per capita income.
4 public funding for maintenance and expansion of health and education and social safety nets suffered an irreparable blow.
Focus on covariates सहसंयोजक
मिलते जुलते हुए कुछ महत्वपूर्ण इंडिकेटर
Our recent analysis focuses on covariates of the MPI
1 that include
🍁per capita state income,
🍁its square,
🍁share of criminals among State MPs,
🍁share of urban population,
🍁and health and education expenditure and
🍁unobserved state fixed effects (e.g., how progressive a State is).
2 If we compare elasticities of MPI with respect to each covariate
(i.e., proportionate change in MPI due to a proportionate change in a covariate such as State per capita income),
the largest reduction in MPI is due to higher State per capita income.
3 But since income decreased drastically, MPI spiked.
The next in order of importance is urban location
A 1% increase in urban location results in a 0.90% increase in MPI.
This is not surprising as rural-urban migration is associated with growth of slums and sub-human living conditions. However, reverse migration during COVID-19 may explain why the effect on MPI is less than proportionate.
कुछ ऐसी बातें जिनके काम ज्यादा होने से एमपी आई घाट और बढ़ रहा है
Both health care and education expenditure are associated with lower MPI
1 — the elasticity of the latter is higher (in absolute value), implying that a 1% increase in the latter reduces MPI more than the same increase in the former.
2 As State-level estimates suggest a decline in educational expenditure, a rise in MPI is likely.
3 Although State-level health expenditure rose to combat COVID-19, it fell far short of what was needed.
4 If the share of Members of Parliament with criminal cases in total State MPs exceeded 20%, the higher was the MPI.
Indeed, what is alarming is their rising share —
🍁 24% of the winners in the Lok Sabha election in 2004 had a criminal background;
🍁it rose to 30% in the 2009 general election,
🍁 34% in the 2014 election,
🍁and 43% in the 2019 election.
lower than the official estimate
1 If we go by our estimates of MPI, the reduction between 2015 and 2019-21 is considerably lower than the official estimate:
2 4.7 percentage points compared with 9.89 percentage points.
3 Our selective review of MPI estimates shows that poverty rose in India’s most populous State, Uttar Pradesh, by over seven percentage points.
🍁Of the States that went to the elections in November (Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram, Rajasthan and Telangana),
🍁we find that the MPI fell in Chhattisgarh (by over six percentage points),
🍁in Rajasthan (by two percentage points) and,
🍁most strikingly, in Madhya Pradesh (by about eight percentage points).
In conclusion, not only does the MPI exaggerate the NDA’s success in fighting deprivation but also perhaps more seriously obfuscates conventional measures of it which may unravel a contradictory story of poverty.
Source the hindu
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