- Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council (PMEAC) chairman made a case for revisiting India’s poverty line at a conference on the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES) 2022-23, hosted by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI).
- He called the debate over the gap between survey findings and national income accounts as pointless.
- India still lacks an official poverty line beyond the Tendulkar Committee’s 2009 recommendations, which set the poverty line at ₹33 per day in urban areas and ₹27 per day in rural areas.
- While the Rangarajan Committee revisited the poverty threshold in 2014, its findings were never officially accepted.
- The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MDPI) from the Niti Aayog, based on the National Family Health Survey, also does not serve as a poverty line.
- PMEAC suggested that a new poverty line might be needed for the HCES data application, which addresses more than just inequality and poverty.
- Inequality measured by the distribution of personal incomes, is slightly higher than that measured by consumption expenditure.
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