Quantifying Vulnerability to Poverty in Rural Manipur: A Study of Agricultural Households from NSSO 70th Round Data

Abstract

Poverty is a stochastic phenomenon as the economic status of a household can change in the face of shocks and in the absence of resources to mitigate the effect of shocks. Thus, a static measure of poverty may not be very reliable for policy formulation. This article attempts to analyse the level of vulnerability to poverty across rural agricultural households by using 3 stage feasible generalized least square (3S FGLS) method and examines the determinants of households’ vulnerability to poverty by logistic regression. In addition, a concerted effort is made to explore the similarities and differences between the determinants of vulnerability and those of poverty. The study used NSSO 70th round (2012–2013) Situation Assessment Survey of Agricultural Households data. The analysis reveals most of the determinants of poverty and vulnerability to be similar although it differs in strength on the impacts and significance level. The FGLS estimates show that the vulnerability of household level is much higher at 50.07% as compared to poverty rate, which is at 43.52% in the study area. Education of the household head, diversification of economic activities and social safety nets are found to be very significant in reducing vulnerability of a household. The safety nets are found to be not significant in reducing poverty. Nonetheless, they are effective in anchoring the vulnerable households against falling into poverty in the study area.