Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label statistical discrepancy

Angus Deaton and lessons for India

This year's Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences was announced on 12 October 2015, the recipient none other than the Cambridge-educated Princeton don, Prof. Angus Deaton. The Royal Academy honoured Prof. Deaton 'for his analysis of consumption, poverty and welfare.'  Prof. Deaton work has been driven by understanding measurement and relies extensively on data for making sense of individual consumption choices. He has also worked in India for understanding poverty as well as it impacts on healthcare outcomes, consumption choices, etc. His work has several important lessons for India. These lessons while not exhaustive do tell important areas for improvement.  The most important message that Prof. Deaton also mentioned in a recent interview was that there seems to be a statistical discrepancy in the data for India. It is because the household survey results do not reconcile with the fact that there seems to be an exceptional increase in income data coming