-ThePrint.inThe idea that all public initiatives to improve well-being are failing or dispensable is evidently wrong.In recent years, a debate has raged in India on what is the level of poverty in the country and whether it has changed, either to reflect the arrival of a new India or the persistence of an old one. Prime Minister Narendra Modi?s government stopped producing official estimates of poverty when it abolished the...

-Livemint.comThere is a growing recognition among policymakers of the need for a multidimensional approach to assess deprivationThere's been some good news for India over the last month. Three different robust, credible measures of poverty have recorded a dramatic reduction in the incidence of poverty in India. The most straightforward of these, the World Bank's estimate of the number of people living on less than $1.90 per day on a purchasing...

-Livemint.comA new multidimensional calculation of poverty reveals that India's BIMARU states, despite having made some improvements, continue to be poorChennai: There?s very little evidence of convergence on social indicators among Indian states, new data on health, education and access to basic amenities between 1998-99 and 2015-16 shows. Over nearly two decades, the ?BIMARU? states have remained at the bottom, while Kerala, Punjab, Goa and Delhi remain at the top. Bihar...

For long, economists have argued among themselves whether income should be the only criterion for measuring poverty. After all, in real life a person can face multiple deprivations, say, in terms of access to education, health and living standards, among others. The multidimensional poverty index (MPI), which offers a valuable complement to traditional income-based poverty measures, was first introduced in the 2010 Human Development Report (HDR). The MPI looks at...

-United Nations The world’s population is set to grow by 2.2 billion between now and 2050, the UN said on Wednesday, and more than half of that growth - 1.3 billion - is likely to be in sub-Saharan Africa, where women’s rights are hampered by limited access to healthcare and education, along with “entrenched gender discrimination”. Monica Ferro, Director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) in Geneva, said the trend globally is...