Articles by S Subramanian

How one measures poverty and inequality has implications for a variety of policy interventions relating to fair allocation in a number of institutional settings. The distribution of international aid is an important case in point. This essay reasserts the importance of certain old-fashioned questions relating to international aid: what is the quantum of aid available in relation to the need for it? How may patterns of allocation, at both the dispensing and receiving ends of aid, be determined so as to take account of both poverty and inter-national inequality in the distribution of incomes? Can some simple and plausible rules of allocation be devised? If so, what correspondence does reality bear to such rules? The questions are addressed with the aid of some simple analytics relating to optimal budgetary intervention in the alleviation of poverty. The ideas discussed are clarified by means of data employed in elementary empirical illustrations.

Once the validity of the "creamy layer" principle is acknowledged in any one dimension of application, or as an axiomatically appealing principle of equality at an abstract level, it would be inconsistent to deny its validity in other spheres of application. It therefore becomes a matter of some importance to submit the appeal of this principle to critical scrutiny.

Poverty comparisons across variable populations present certain fundamental difficulties, particularly in respect of the most "basic" of poverty measures, those related to some headcount of the poor. The most commonly employed headcount measures are the headcount ratio H and the aggregate headcount A. Each of these indices has its respective merits and disadvantages. In this note, a composite headcount index M*, which combines H and A, is presented. The poverty ranking of income distributions by M* attaches some weight to the ranking by each of H and A, and thereby avoids the possibly extreme judgment of either in isolation.

The unhappy fact is that illicit dramatisations of misrepresented statistics today are compatible with demands for ethnic cleansing tomorrow. Intellectually, morally, and politically, this sort of manufactured hysteria and diversionary violence must be strongly and uncompromisingly resisted.