The thesis delves into questions of measurement of poverty and inequality and evaluates a hypothesis behind a policy that impacts democratic rights of millions of individuals in India.
The first two papers are based on the Global Consumption and Income Project (GCIP). They describe the construction of the consumption and income datasets and the evolution of material wellbeing in the last 55 years for 161 countries around the world. The third paper proposes an individual multidimensional poverty measure that takes into account intra-household inequality when measuring poverty. The last paper investigates if educated leaders lead to better education outcomes for children than less-educated leaders. Using a close election regression discontinuity design we find no evidence that educated leaders are better than less-educated counterparts.
Keywords: poverty; inequality; political economy india
