Title of Research Project

of Project The proposed research will examine the nexus between consumption/income poverty, malnutrition and health status in India. Also examined will be the nutritional impact of anti-poverty programs such as the Food for Work Program, the IRDP and the Public Distribution System (PDS). The results of this research would, therefore, have significant policy implications for the design and targeting of the food subsidy in India as well as for evaluating the nutritional impact of anti-poverty programs. Using information on nutritional value of Indian diets, we will compute the nutrition content of the consumption of rural households for the quinquennial NSS surveys of 1987–88, 1993–94 and 1998–99 and critically examine the nature of the divergence between consumption/income poverty and nutrition linked deprivation and the underlying reasons. The household level data will permit us to focus on groups that are highly poverty prone (e.g. agricultural labourers). Since it is possible in such data sets to distinguish between different states, tests for stochastic dominance can be done for the country as a whole as well as for individual states. It would be important to find out whether the pattern of incidence of undernutrition matches the known pattern of incidence of poverty, e.g. whether undernutrition is more prevalent among agricultural labourers or SC/ST. Further, with time series data on nutrition, it would be possible to ascertain whether this pattern of incidence persists over time. Also indices of the inequality of undernutrition could be computed. At another level using indices of average consumption across groups for a longer time span, the pattern of dependence between undernutrition and factors such as inflation of basic food items will be explored. Furthermore, the relationship between nutrition and income/consumption levels will be ascertained. In addition, using the Family Health Survey results for 1992-93 and 1998-99 detailed family health survey for each of the states of India as well as the country as a whole, we would, address issues such as the dependence of health status of children on nutrition, mother’s nutrition, education etc. The proposed research would have important implications for designing food subsidy. The costs of removing or reducing such subsidy will be articulated — also the issue of targeting of food subsidy towards groups that are most undernourished will be ascertained.