Article S8.11 Multidimensional Poverty and the State of Child Health in India Seminar Leader: Sanjay Kumar Mohanty International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), Mumbai, India sanjayiips[@]yahoo.co.in Poverty eradication is a priority in India, as it is in the entire world. But precise estimation of poverty is difficult, particularly as there is no universal standard. With the evolution of the human development approach, there has been a shift of focus from the purely economic dimension to the various other dimensions of poverty. Even though the concept of multidimensional poverty has been widely accepted, its measurement and application is still limited. Mohanty’s (2010) study on “Multidimensional Poverty and the State of Child Health in India” focuses on this concept. The study aims to measure multidimensional poverty in India and use it to investigate the state of child health among abject poor, poor, and non-poor households in the country. As regards the measurement of multidimensional poverty, researchers tend to disagree on the choice of dimensions, choice of indicators, fixation of cut-off point between poor and non-poor, aggregation of multiple dimensions into a single index, weighting of dimensions, and units of analysis. However the commonly used dimensions are (a) education, (b) health, and (c) income/welath and there seems to be a general agreement with respect to specifying the poverty line for each dimension. The need for the study arose because of the following reasons: (a) measurement and application of multidimensional poverty is nonexistent in India, (b) official estimates of poverty are derived from consumption expenditures, (c) reduction in consumption poverty is not accompanied by reduction in hunger in the country, (d) under-five mortality in India accounts for one-fifth of global death and its reduction has been slower in the last decade, (e) inverse association between poverty level and inequality in child health, and (f) in transitional economies, benefits of healthcare are more likely to reach the non-poor. Mohanty wanted to test the hypothesis that there is no significant difference in child survival among educationally poor, economically poor, and health-poor households. He also wanted to test whether differences in healthcare utilisation by level of poverty is large across the Indian states. The unit of analysis was the household. The variables used in the study were child care (immunisation coverage, medical assistance at birth, health card of the child) and child survival (infant mortality rate and under-five mortality rate). Bivariate analysis, principal components analysis, and life table methods were used. Data were taken from National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3, 2005-06). In the study, various indicators under the three dimensions (education, health, and income/wealth) were considered to define multidimensional poverty. The basic reference while defining the indicators was the multidimensional poverty index used by UNDP in their Human Development Report, 2010. The index was slightly adapted to the specific context of the study. Indicators for income/wealth were further classified into rural and urban categories. Mohanty classified a household as abject poor if it is poor in any two or all three dimensions, as poor but not abject poor if it is poor in any one dimension, and non-poor if it is not poor in any dimension. (Of course, the category “poor” included both abject poor and poor but not abject poor.) The study found the following: (a) About a half of India’s population is poor in multidimensional poverty while one-fifth is abject poor. (b) The level of poverty is higher in those states where the state of human development is low and vice versa. (c) The correlation between economically poor and health-poor is weak while the correlation between economically poor and educationally poor is moderate. (d) Child survival varies largely by poverty level, within and among the states. (e) Multidimensional poverty estimates are validated by the low access of poor to financial institutions and healthcare services. (f) The chance of child survival is equally low among economically poor, educationally poor, and health-poor households. (g) The child care differences are large between rural and urban households, as also among the Indian states. There has been a significant shift in the understanding and defining of poverty. It has evolved from a monetary approach to a human development approach. Contrary to common belief, the link between economic growth and human development is not automatic. The study emphasises that economic growth may be a necessary condition but not a sufficient one for human development. Reference Mohanty, S. K. (2010). Multidimensional poverty and the state of child health in India (Asia Research Centre working paper 30). London: London School of Economics & Political Science. Retrieved February 3, 3011, from http://www2.lse.ac.uk/asiaResearchCentre/_files/ARCWP30-Mohanty.pdf Reported by Srilata Patnaik, with inputs from Paromita Goswami; edited by D. P. Dash. [February 3, 2011] Copyleft Xavier Institute of Management, Xavier Square, Bhubaneswar 751013, India Research World (ISSN 0974-2379) http://www1.ximb.ac.in/RW.nsf/pages/Home | ||
 |