Determinants and Decomposition of Poverty of Rural India: Glimpses from the Purulia District of West Bengal

Abstract

The paper aims to analyze poverty issues in rural households of India sampled purposively from the perspective of per capita Monthly Consumption Expenditure. In addition, the decomposition of poverty across social group affiliation and economic status adds another flavor to this study. The study concentrates on one of the backward areas of West Bengal, the district of Purulia, a resource-poor district with a distinct presence of scheduled social group population. The candidate villages were selected purposively keeping in mind the aspects of physical isolation and socio-economic stagnancy. Quantitative tools like Stepwise Multiple Regression and Decomposition analysis by FGT indices were instrumental in estimating the relative strengths of the factors affecting poverty. Besides, the study has simultaneously added the life history approach to integrate the QUAN-QUAL methods with an aim to produce a more complete picture. The critical findings include that the scheduled social groups, especially tribes, and daily wage casual laborers followed by agricultural laborers, were identified as the most vulnerable to poverty indicators in their respective population segments.