摘要：Poverty in rural India has declined substantially in recent decades. The percentageof the rural population living below the poverty line fluctuated between 50 and 65 percentprior to the mid-1960s, but then declined steadily to about one-third of the ruralpopulation by the early 1990s. This steady decline in poverty was strongly associatedwith agricultural growth, particularly the green revolution, which in turn was a responseto massive public investments in agriculture and rural infrastructure. Public investmentinrural areas has also benefitted the poor through its impact on the growth of the rural non-farm economy, and government expenditure on rural poverty and employment programs,which has grown rapidly, has directly benefitted the rural poor.The primary purpose of this study is to investigate the causes of the decline in ruralpoverty in India, and particularly to disentangle the specific role that governmentinvestments have played. We seek to quantify the effectiveness of different types ofgovernment expenditures in contributing to poverty alleviation. Such information canassist policy makers in targeting their investments more effectively to reduce poverty. More efficient targeting has become increasingly important in an era of macroeconomicreforms in which the government is under pressure to reduce its total budget.The study uses state level data for 1970 to 1993 to estimate an econometric modelthat permits calculation of the number of poor people raised above the poverty line foreach additional million rupees spent on different expenditure items. The model is alsostructured to enable identification of the different channels through which different typesof government expenditures impact on the poor. We distinguish between direct andindirect effects. The direct effects arise in the form of benefits the poor receive fromemployment programs directly targeted to rural poor. The indirect effects arise whengovernment investments in rural infrastructure, agricultural research, health and educationof rural people, stimulate agricultural and nonagricultural growth, leading to greateremployment and income earning opportunities for the poor, and to cheaper food. Understanding these different effects provides useful policy insights for helping toimprove the effectiveness of government expenditures in reducing poverty.But targeting government expenditures simply to reduce poverty is not sufficient. Government expenditures also need to stimulate economic growth. This is needed tohelp generate the resources needed for future government expenditures. It is also the onlyway of providing a permanent solution to the poverty problem, as well as to increase theoverall welfare of rural people. The model is therefore formulated so as to measure thegrowth as well as the poverty impact of different items of government expenditure. Thisenables us not only to rank different types of investment in terms of their growth andpoverty impacts, but also to quantify any tradeoffs or complementarities that may arisebetween the achievement of these two goals.
