Incidence of poverty in Manipur and the potential reasons

In this paper we examined a large number of sector and household-specific variables, to understand their roles in the prolonged poverty in Manipur. We investigated the reasons by decomposing the household-specific variables based on Foster Greer Thorbecke (FGT) measure. The important factors responsible for this outcome were found to be unfavorable distribution of landholding, household size, low educational attainment and high dependency ratio. The analysis also highlighted that during this period, poverty ratio, as officially measured, has declined slightly but the intensity and severity as a measure of poverty have increased. The decline in poverty ratio during the study period is mainly reflected through the fall in head count ratio and not attributed to reduction in depth of poverty in the state.