Asset Poverty in India

Swati Dutta

Published: September 2013

In order to formulate policy to target the correctly identified rural poor in India, focus on an income poverty measure alone is insufficient. The purpose of this research is to study a new area of poverty measurement based on data that detail a household’s access to basic assets. The study has used the secondary data source provided by the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) for the time period of 1992, 1998 and 2005. In order to construct the asset index the technique of multiple correspondence analysis is used. A discussion of trends in asset poverty in various states in India follows, together with the policies they need to adopt depending on their state of poverty.