Social Capital and Poverty in India
Abstract
This paper is a motivated by the need to expand research on social capital and its effects on poverty. Studies
of social capital and its economic payoffs have tended to focus on industrialised countries, whilst those
studies which have focused on developing countries have been based on micro level survey data. This paper
therefore addresses the need to look at social capital at the wider macro level while examining the impact of
social capital on poverty.
The paper focuses on poverty at the state level in India and asks the question: have those states with larger
endowments of social capital been more successful at reducing poverty? In order to answer this question an
econometric model of poverty is constructed that not only captures the effects of physical and human capital,
but also includes social capital as a determinant of poverty. The paper concludes that there is some evidence
to support the hypothesis that a state’s endowment of social capital does affect the ability of that state to
reduce poverty.
Citation
Morris, M. (1998) Social Capital and Poverty in India, IDS Working Paper 61, Brighton: IDS.Is part of series
IDS working papers;61Library catalogue entry
http://bldscat.ids.ac.uk/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=83589Rights holder
Institute of Development StudiesCollections
- IDS Research [1638]