Relative deprivation among religious and social groups in India: Measuring prevalence, depth and severity of poverty with nss unit data

This paper examines the relative deprivation of different social and religious groups in India in terms of prevalence, depth and severity indices of poverty since the early 1990s. The risks of poverty have been worked out at 75 percent and 50 percent of the median expenditure per capita across the major social and religious groups in India with unit level data of household consumer survey at 50^th, 55^th, 61^st and 66^th rounds conducted by the NSSO. In our estimate, lower the threshold higher is the risk of poverty. The poverty risk has been significantly higher in urban areas than in rural areas at any threshold level of consumption everywhere in India. Scheduled tribes among the social groups and Muslims among religious groups are mostly deprived in terms of head count measure. The extreme poverty measured at 50 percent of the median expenditure per capita has also been significantly higher for scheduled tribes. Although the poverty rates at 75 percent median expenditure were higher for Muslims than for Hindus and other religious groups over different NSS periods, the incidence of extreme poverty was higher for Hindus than for Muslims during the same period. The Christians have relatively better access to education and the relative poverty among them was lower as compared to other religious groups. The people belonging to the scheduled and other backward classes, particularly the tribal class, are far lagging behind those of general castes in terms of depth of poverty. There was no significant gap in depth of poverty between Hindus and Muslims. The inequality among the tribal poor was significantly higher than inequality among other social groups in each NSS round. The prevalence and poverty gap were higher among Muslims, but the severity index of poverty was higher among Hindus than among Muslims at least until 2004-05.