Abstract:
This study intends to explore the poverty inequality dynamics across North Eastern States
(NES) of India during recent decade. Based on NSSO’s Consumer Expenditure Survey Rounds
an analysis has been carried out for two time points i.e. 2004-05 (61st round) and 2011-12 (68th
round) to examine the changing pattern of poverty and inequality in these regions by
decomposing changes in poverty in to growth, redistribution and interaction components. This
paper used headcount ratio to measure poverty, Gini Index as well as poverty decomposition
method (Datt and Ravallion, 1992) to quantify the relative contribution of economic growth and
redistribution to changes in poverty. The results depict that the NES are quite different in terms
of basic socioeconomic attributes from the mainland as per the level of development. As per the
decomposition results the growth mean effect and redistribution component determines the rise
or fall in the poverty effect. States where economic reforms were initiated properly with other
developmental activities those NES performs better than the rest in terms of the said effects