ISSN (Print) - 0012-9976 | ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846

Articles by Sanjay K MohantySubscribe to Sanjay K Mohanty

The Longitudinal Ageing Study in India, Wave 1, 2017–18

The Longitudinal Ageing Study in India is the world’s largest and India’s first ever survey that provides a longitudinal database for designing policies and programmes for the older population in the broad domains of social, health, and economic well-being, in addition to understanding the science of ageing. In this paper, key findings from the baseline survey of LASI on a range of indicators that cover chronic health conditions, biomarkers (based on direct health examinations), healthcare utilisation, social and economic well-being of older adults in India and its states and union territories are presented.

Reflections on the NITI Aayog Multidimensional Poverty Index

The availability of information from the pan-India household survey, the National Family Health Survey, facilitates the adoption of the global multidimensional poverty framework and helps in generating results for the Indian states and districts, but it fails to capture the true level of multiple deprivations in better-off states and urban areas. The explicit limitation of the fresh endeavour by the NITI Aayog is its lack of comparability across the spectrum of human development within the country.

Economic Proxies, Household Consumption

While the official estimates of poverty in India are derived from the consumption expenditure data, economic proxies are increasingly used to explain the differentials in health and healthcare utilisation in population-based surveys. Using data from the World Health Survey, India, 2003, covering a nationally representative sample of 10,750 households and 9,994 adults, this paper examines the extent of agreement of monthly per capita consumption expenditure and economic proxies (combined with the wealth index) with the differentials in health estimates according to two alternative measures. It finds that economic differentials in health and healthcare utilisation based on economic proxies are not similar to those of direct measures. There is an urgent need to integrate an abridged version of the consumption expenditure schedule in population-based health surveys. The results also indicate that the extent of agreement of the mpce with the wealth index is weak. Only 31% of households are classified in the same quintile of mpce and wealth index and the health estimates are sensitive to these two measures.

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