IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/dse/indecr/0056.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Consumption Smoothing and Insurance Against the Income Risks: A Case of India

Author

Listed:
  • KUMAR, PARMOD

    (Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore)

  • SINGH, SUDHIR KUMAR

    (Word Bank)

Abstract

This paper examines the incidence of consumption smoothing or risk sharing among the above and below poverty households in India. The results suggest partial risk sharing activities between households either within the same village or within their same ethnic groups. The results of insurance through same ethnic groups are more robust than that of village insurance. The results of insurance along the same caste line were found across the board whereas results for village insurance appeared in few cases. The implications of these results are quite significant. The findings of the paper indicate that various welfare programmes launched by the government to provide safety nets to the poor are not being targeted adequately as the poorest of the poor households remain the most vulnerable. The findings strengthen the case for improved targeting and making some provision for the public insurance for the households who lie at the bottom in the income bracket.

Suggested Citation

  • Kumar, Parmod & Singh, Sudhir Kumar, 2012. "Consumption Smoothing and Insurance Against the Income Risks: A Case of India," Indian Economic Review, Department of Economics, Delhi School of Economics, vol. 47(2), pages 265-283.
  • Handle: RePEc:dse:indecr:0056
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Consumption smoothing; Risk sharing; Insurance; Above poverty; Below poverty; Antyodaya; Public distribution system;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
    • I38 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:dse:indecr:0056. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Pami Dua (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deudein.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.