Income Versus Calories

Economists establish the poverty line to establish a minimum income for calculating the number of impoverished individuals in a country. Households earning less than the poverty level are classified as impoverished. Depending on the specific socio-economic demands, various nations use different approaches to define the threshold earnings. Consumer spending surveys conducted by the National Sample Survey Organisation are used to determine poverty. A poor family is described as one that spends less than a certain amount each month. The relationship between poverty and nourishment in India is perplexing since trends in calorie poverty and income deprivation have been going in distinct ways within the Indian economy in the long term. 

Defining Poverty in India

In India, setting a poverty line has been a contentious topic since the former Planning Commission developed the first of its kind poverty line there in the late-1970s. It was calculated using the minimum daily demand for calories of an individual in rural and urban regions of 2,400 & 2,100 calories, correspondingly. Economists were occasionally engaged in determining the poverty threshold.

Recently, certain changes were made to the poverty line to account for other essential needs of the poor, like shelter, clothes, education, healthcare, sanitation, transportation, gasoline, entertainment, and so on, making it much more genuine.

Critics claim that the government has purposefully maintained the poverty level low. The administration has been able to demonstrate that thousands of people have risen out of poverty thanks to a reduced poverty line. Critics argue that this is utterly false since the concept of poverty is debatable. They further claim that the information isn’t statistically sound and was published only for political purposes.

Calorie Poverty

Income and Calorie poverty is calculated using a household-specific relationship between income and calorie that takes into consideration family members’ ages, gender, and level of activity. Suitable estimation techniques, such as concurrent dependent variables and Bayesian propensity score pairing, are employed to resolve the issue of causation in cross-section data. According to the findings, a low-income home is more likely to be calorie deficient. There is no one-to-one correlation between the two categories of families, though.

In particular, households in transitions just over the poverty level have substantially different income and calorie habits. According to the findings, income and calorie poverty should be alleviated by providing subsidies to low-income households. Furthermore, subsidies must be targeted at low-income rather than calorie-deficient households. Furthermore, nutrition strategies should be tailored to the needs of transitory households just above the poverty line.

Determination of poverty line through calories

Economists establish the poverty line to establish a minimum income for calculating the number of impoverished individuals in a country. Households earning less than the poverty level are classified as impoverished. Depending on the relationship between income and calorie, various nations use different approaches to define the threshold earnings.

The former poverty line calculation formula was based on the ideal income and calorie need. Cereals, legumes, veggies, dairy, oil, sugar, and other foods offer these calories in combination. Income and Calorie requirements differ based on a specific age, gender, and type of job. In India, the recommended daily calorie intake is 2400 kcal for each person in rural regions and 2100 kcal per person in urban areas. Because people in rural regions engage in greater physical labour, their calorie demands are estimated to be higher than that in metropolitan settings. Based on these figures, the poverty threshold for a person in rural regions was set at Rs 328 every month and Rs 454 in urban areas during 2000. As a result, during 2000, a household of five living in rural regions and generating less than Rs 1,640 monthly will be considered poor.

Conclusion

Poverty is described as a situation in which a person or a family lacks the financial means to maintain a basic level of life. However, people’s perceptions of poverty can change over time and among nations. The traditional method of determining poverty is to set a minimum expenditure that must be spent on a set of goods and services to meet basic human requirements. The poverty line is the term for this amount of money spent.