Regional Inequality in India in the 1990s: A Further Look

Abstract

This paper examines changes in regional inequality in India in the 1990s, using data for 59 of India’s 78 agro-climatic regions from the National Sample Survey. It extends the work of Singh et al. (2003) in two ways. First, it allows for differences in baseline growth performance across individual states. It confirms the relatively poor performance of eastern states in the 1990s. Second, it also analyzes economic performance using NSS consumption expenditure data. In this case, it finds that there was conditional convergence for urban households, but not for rural households in that period.