Rethinking Social Safety Nets in a Changing Society: Evidence from India Human Development Survey

CASI Seminar

in partnership with the South Asia Center & Dept of Sociology

Sonalde Desai
Distinguished University Professor Emerita, Department of Sociology, University of Maryland
Center for the Advanced Study of India
Ronald O. Perelman Center for Political Science & Economics
133 South 36th Street, Suite 230
Philadelphia PA 19104-6215

About the Seminar:
With a growing economy and declining poverty, India faces a curious challenge in providing a social safety net to its citizens. Using data from three rounds of the India Human Development Survey (IHDS), collected in 2004-05, 2011-12, and 2022-24, this seminar shows that households face considerable transition in and out of poverty as the economy grows. Historically, India’s approach to social safety nets has involved identifying the poor and providing them with priority access to various social protection programs that include both in-kind and cash assistance—however, the nature of poverty changes with economic growth. This churn in households’ economic circumstances makes it difficult to identify and target the poor precisely.

Using unique, newly collected panel data, Professor Desai makes three observations about India’s anti-poverty programs: (1) Identification of households as poor (now dubbed priority households) relies on identification exercises carried out every 10-15 years and assumes that poverty status is relatively static. However, results presented in this seminar will document a substantial transition in and out of poverty. (2) This ex-ante identification of needy households leads to relatively weak correlation between households’ actual economic status and access to social safety nets. This should not be assumed to be an example of elite capture but rather an artefact of a static program design. (3) Social safety nets may need to be redesigned in a way that is responsive to changing economic conditions and unexpected events, both at an individual and at a community level.

About the Speaker:
Sonalde Desai is Distinguished University Professor Emerita in the Department of Sociology, University of Maryland. She is a demographer whose work deals primarily with social inequalities in developing countries with a particular focus on gender and class inequalities. She studies inequalities in education, employment, and maternal and child health outcomes by locating them within the region’s political economy. She has published articles in a wide range of sociological and demographic journals, including American Sociological Review, Demography, Population and Development Review, and Feminist Studies. Professor Desai is currently examining changes in the nature and composition of Indian middle classes in the context of India’s movement from state-capitalism to market-capitalism and increasing involvement in the global economy. She is the principal investigator for the India Human Development Survey (IHDS), India’s first nationwide panel survey of over 40,000 households, the data of which is publicly available and being utilized by more than 11,000 users worldwide.

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The Nand & Jeet Khemka Distinguished Lecture Series is an endowed public program of the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI). Launched in the 2007-08 academic year, and made possible through the generous support of the Nand & Jeet Khemka Foundation, the series brings renowned India specialists to the Penn community and serves as a critical forum for analyzing and understanding the complex economic, political, social, and cultural changes that the world’s largest democracy is experiencing, as well as the challenges that lie ahead.
The Saluja Global Fellows Program has been made possible by the generous gift from Vishal Saluja ENG’89 W’89. CASI was excited to launch the program during the 2022–23 academic year, coinciding with the Center’s 30th Anniversary. This new program enables CASI to invite eminent leaders and rising experts on contemporary India preferably from the fields of media, culture, law, and contemporary history to be in residence for one to two weeks at CASI.