GOVERNMENT SPENDING, GROWTH AND POVERTY: AN ANALYSIS OF INTERLINKAGES IN RURAL INDIA

作者：Shenggen Fan, Peter Hazell, Sukhadeo Thorat, Fan, Shenggen, Hazell, Peter B.R., Thorat, Sukhadeo · 发表于：AgEcon Search (University of Minnesota, USA) · 年份：1998 · DOI：10.22004/ag.econ.16071 · 被引用次数：54 · 研究领域：Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth、Income, Poverty, and Inequality、Agricultural Economics and Practices

Poverty in rural India has declined substantially in recent decades. The percentage of the rural population living below the poverty line fluctuated between 50 and 65 percent prior to the mid-1960s, but then declined steadily to about one-third of the rural population by the early 1990s. This steady decline in poverty was strongly associated with agricultural growth, particularly the green revolution, which in turn was a response to massive public investments in agriculture and rural infrastructure. Public investment in rural areas has also benefitted the poor through its impact on the growth of the rural nonfarm economy, and government expenditure on rural poverty and employment programs, which has grown rapidly, has directly benefitted the rural poor. The primary purpose of this study is to investigate the causes of the decline in rural poverty in India, and particularly to disentangle the specific role that government investments have played. We seek to quantify the effectiveness of different types of government expenditures in contributing to poverty alleviation. Such information can assist policy makers in targeting their investments more effectively to reduce poverty. More efficient targeting has become increasingly important in an era of macroeconomic reforms in which the government is under pressure to reduce its total budget. The study uses state level data for 1970 to 1993 to estimate an econometric model that permits calculation of the number of poor people raised ...