Poverty, technology and infrastructure in rural India
Gaiha, R.
Cambridge Journal of Economics 9(3): 221-243
1985
ISSN/ISBN: 0309-166X Document Number: 333660
This paper contributes to rural poverty debate by shifting the focus from the indices of agricultural production and the cost of living to: (1) aspects of village development, mainly infrastructural development; (2) the new agricultural technology; and (3) certain demographic and household characteristics, as explanatory variables. Disaggregation by occupation is carried out and the causes of poverty are studied separately for two occupational groups, 'Cultivating households' and 'Casual labour households'. Results indicated that variables belonging to each of the three groups, village specific, technological and household specific, exercised a strong influence on the risk of being poor for both household types but that while some variables produced similar effects on the risk of poverty for both occupational groups, (technological variables), a few differed in their effects; availability of medical services exercised a strong negative effect on the poverty risk of casual labour households but a negligable effect on cultivating households. New technology had a strong poverty reducing effect among cultivating households but its effect over time seemed to be weakening.