Rural Poverty, Employment and Disability

By Vani S. Kulkarni and Raghav GaihaPHILADELPHIA and NEW DELHI, Mar 11 2020 (IPS) About 15% of the world’s population lives with some form of disability, of whom 2-4% experience significant difficulties in functioning. Disability is part of the human condition, and almost everyone will be temporarily or permanently impaired at some point in life, and those who survive into old age will experience increasing difficulties in functioning. Here the focus is on empirical validation of whether disabilities are associated with economic hardships through loss of employment and consequently impoverishment in rural India. The motivation stems from continuing neglect of health in the budgetary allocations –including the allocations for 2020-21. Vani S. KulkarniFor lack of more recent data-the NSS does not cover disabilities- we use the two rounds of the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) panel data for 2005 and 2012. An intuitive methodology is used to overcome reverse causality between poverty and disability by comparing poverty outcomes in 2012 and prevalence of disability in 2005. Priority in time of the latter allows us to make unambiguous comparisons between poverty and disability in rural India. The sequence of empirical analyses summarised below is: (i) factors associated with disability; (ii) relationship between rural employment and disability; and (iii) between poverty/or a welfare metric and disability in rural India. The central argument resting on these building...
Source: IPS Inter Press Service - Health - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Tags: Asia-Pacific Development & Aid Economy & Trade Featured Headlines Health Human Rights Labour Poverty & SDGs TerraViva United Nations Source Type: news