Growth, Development & Poverty Measurement — Practice

Question 1

Is economic growth a quantitative or a normative measure?

Accepted Answer

Quantitative — it measures the rate of increase in real output (real GDP growth), independent of who benefits or how living standards changed.

Question 2

Name the three components the Human Development Index combines.

Accepted Answer

Life expectancy at birth (health), mean and expected years of schooling (education), and GNI per capita, PPP-adjusted (income).

Question 3

Which committee's poverty line methodology has the Indian government NOT officially adopted?

Accepted Answer

The Rangarajan Committee's (2014).

Question 4

What was the Tendulkar Committee's key methodological break from the earlier Lakdawala Committee approach?

Accepted Answer

It moved away from a pure calorie-intake norm toward a broader reference basket that also priced in a minimum standard of health and education spending.

Question 5

How many indicators does NITI Aayog's national MPI use, and across which three dimensions?

Accepted Answer

12 indicators across health, education, and living standards; a person is multidimensionally poor if deprived in at least one-third of the weighted indicators.

Question 6

Explain, with reference to India's own recent trend, why a falling poverty headcount and a rising Gini coefficient are not contradictory.

Accepted Answer

Poverty headcount measures how many people cross an absolute threshold; the Gini coefficient measures relative income distribution. India's poverty rate has fallen while its Gini has risen, since growth has lifted many above the poverty line while the income share of the top decile has grown even faster.

Question 7

Compare the Tendulkar and Rangarajan poverty estimates for 2011-12, stating both figures and the methodological reason they differ.

Accepted Answer

Tendulkar: 21.9%, based on a single mixed reference basket. Rangarajan: 29.5%, based on separate, more generous rural (₹972/month) and urban (₹1,407/month) per-capita baskets. The Rangarajan Committee was constituted because the Tendulkar line was criticised as set too low, producing its higher estimate — but its methodology was never officially adopted.

Question 8

Explain why India's national MPI shows a sharper improvement (24.85% to 14.96%, 2015-16 to 2019-21) than income-poverty measures typically show over a similar period.

Accepted Answer

The MPI captures deprivation in indicators like sanitation, electrification and cooking-fuel access — areas that improved rapidly through large public-provision programmes over this period — in addition to health and education, so gains from government schemes register directly in the MPI even where household income itself may have risen more slowly.

Practice — Growth, Development & Poverty Measurement

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