Applications of Stochastic Dominance: A Study on India

In this paper we adopt stochastic dominance techniques in order to examine the performance of rural India, urban India, female headed households and backward caste households in terms of poverty, inequality and welfare. We have used National Sample Survey data on consumer expenditure 66th round and 61 st round for the reference period of 2009-2010 and 2004-2005 respectively. Using scale adjusted expenditure we find for all the subgroups, poverty has decreased. Using these techniques we observe that among the social groups schedule caste and schedule tribe households are the most deprived groups. Empirical results shows that economies of scale plays an important role in the comparision of male and female headed households.