Socio-economic nature and dimensions of poverty in India

Poverty has been one of the most important policy concerns since India's independence. While we have managed to reduce the levels of poverty to some extent, India's economic growth has not sufficiently trickled down to reduce poverty to a great degree. Poverty continues to persist across the states and regions in India. It is possible to study the analysis of poverty in terms of its nature and dimensions from purely an economic angle but the emphasis made here is to throw some light on the socio-economic aspects of poverty behaviour by purely analyzing income and demographic variables including literacy. The primary aim of this elementary undertaking is to investigate the dynamics in socio-economic implications of the nexus between demographic features and the distribution of poverty while taking into account social sector expenditure. We find that the inter-group variations in poverty across states are highly unequal while, poverty levels have actually escalated for a few states off-lately. This study also points out that the improvements in growth rate of sex ratio and literacy rate have can go a long way in positively contributing to the problems of poverty and population densities. Some of the states in India have managed to overcome key problems pertaining to both poverty levels and incidences but these problems still need to be addressed throughout many other states. It is precisely because of this that a comprehensive national policy on poverty eradication needs to be formulated while taking into consideration the well-known success stories.