What is uniform Recall Period for collection of data on consumption expenditure for the purpose of estimation of poverty?
Answers
Explanation:
The World Bank has this week released a report saying the proportion of people living in extreme poverty has fallen to single digits in 2015: 9.6 per cent, down from 12.8 per cent in 2012. This is a first since the Bank started compiling such data in 1990. The other main takeaway was the claim that India has been overestimating its poverty rate. Far from the 21.9 per cent (for 2011-12) calculated by the Suresh Tendulkar Committee, or the even higher 29.5 per cent pegged by the Rangarajan Committee, the World Bank’s estimate is just 12.4 per cent. But more than any real change in the condition of the poor, the differences in poverty rates for the same year only underlines the importance of the way in which data is collected.
It is important to understand that a poverty line is essentially a monetary value. The idea is to collect data on people’s consumption expenditure, and to ascertain how many people surveyed fall below that poverty line. In India, there were two main ways of collecting data: Uniform Reference Period (URP) and Mixed Reference Period (MRP). Up until 1993-94, the poverty line was based on URP data. This involved asking people about their consumption expenditure across a 30-day recall period. In other words, the information was based on the recall of consumption expenditure over the last month alone.