A Behavior‐Based Approach to the Estimation of Poverty in India
提出用食品支出比例识别贫困人口的新方法，数据需求低于官方方法，并通过验证测试，发现按此方法划分的贫困线附近家庭热量来源更一致。
Abstract Estimates of poverty in India are crucial inputs for the understanding of world poverty, yet there is much disagreement about the numbers and the legitimacy of methods used to derive them. In this paper, we propose and justify an alternative approach to identify the poor, which uses the proportion of income spent on food. Our estimates have weaker data requirements than official methods, and they compare favorably with several validation tests. Most notably, households around our state poverty lines obtain their calories from similar sources, whereas this is not true of official poverty lines. We also find that rates of self‐reported hunger are higher in states that we classify as poor.