Decomposition of poverty disparity across social groups in rural India

This study finds out the possible sources of increasing poverty disparity between social groups while absolute poverty declined in each group in rural India by developing a methodology to decompose relative poverty gap between two social groups by following Massoumi and Mahmoudi (2013). It is observed that absolute poverty declined at the highest rate among the Non-SC/ST (Other) people as compared to SCs and STs. The major component of overall poverty disparity is the between-group disparity. It rose at a faster rate since the initiation of reform measures in India. Decomposition of poverty changes shows that the growth effect was stronger than the distribution effect in reducing poverty incidence for all social groups. Further, higher growth effect among non-SC/ST relative to ST raised poverty disparity between non-SC/ST and ST. Faster growth in the Indian economy during the post-reform period had the least effect on poverty for extreme marginalised groups.