Contextualizing spatiality of multidimensional poverty in rural and urban India: A geographical perspective

Abstract

The present study tries to estimate the spatial pattern of incidence, extent and severity of multidimensional poverty in rural and urban India during 2021 obtaining data from the report of NITI Aayog based on NFHS-4 dataset. The study reveals that large interstate disparities persist in the pattern of multidimensional poverty and its intensity in rural and urban India. The study also attempts to examine the interstate deprivation in different indicators of rural and urban MPI which confirms that the magnitude of deprivation is acute in most of the poverty indicators in the poorer states of India like Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh etc. Finally we have also performed the decomposition analysis to identify the most significant contributor for multidimensional poverty which revealed in both rural and urban space among the dimension health and among the indicators nutrition have made most significant contribution in overall score of multidimensional poverty. The target oriented policy for poverty eradication programmes needs to be stressed. The present study may be beneficial for the development planners and policy makers to understand the pattern of rural and urban multidimensional poverty and deprivation across the states of India in a better way.

Keywords

• multidimensional poverty
• rural and urban Poverty
• spatial pattern of poverty
• deprivation
• Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI)
• decomposition of poverty