Pandemic, Poverty, and Inequality: Evidence from India

In this podcast, Surjit Bhalla, Karan Bhasin, and Arvind Virmani talk about their latest paper published in IMF on the “estimates of poverty [extreme poverty PPP$1.9 and PPP$3.2] and consumption inequality in India for each of the years 2004-5 through the pandemic year 2020-21. They explain how extreme poverty was as low as 0.8 percent in the pre-pandemic year 2019, and how the government food transfer schemes played a key role in ensuring that they remain at that level in the pandemic year of 2020.”