Abhiroop Mukhopadhyay

MULTIPLE DIMENSIONS OF URBAN WELL-BEING

Concomitant with higher levels of urbanisation in developing countries, there has been a sharp increase in both the number of urban poor and slum dwellers. In line with Millennium Development Goals, the focus of policymakers has primarily been on slum dwellers. Using a nationally representative dataset from India, we compare well-being of people living in slums with those living in non-slum urban areas. We argue that while policies to improve access to water and sanitation in slums are justifiable, livelihood programmes that target only the slums would miss the poorest living in non-slum urban areas.

Economic cost analysis in cancer management and its relevance today.

The global cancer burden has shown a distinct shift in the last two decades and its financial impact can be large, even among patients living in high resource countries, with comprehensive health insurance policies. It is hard to imagine its impact on patients of developing countries where insurance policies exist infrequently and often cost becomes the greatest barrier in availing cancer treatment. It is recognized that these costs include the direct cost of disease treatment and care, indirect costs accrued by the patient and the family, and economic losses to the society as a whole. Economic cost analysis or cost-effectiveness analysis has emerged as a basic tool in the evaluation of health-care practices. To date, these cost data have been collected only sporadically, even in the most developed countries, and there is a great need for incorporating economic cost assessment practices in developing countries, so that patients and their families can access the care adequately. The current review has been done using PubMed and MEDLINE search with keywords like cancer, cost-analysis, cost-effectiveness, economic burden, medical cost, etc.

A robust normative evaluation of India's performance in allocating risks of death

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to provide a robust normative evaluation of the recent evolution of Indians exposures to health-related risks. Design/methodology/approach - The paper compares empirically the distributions of individuals risks of death in India on the basis of new ethically robust criteria in 1995 and 2002. Probabilities of death are assigned individuals as an estimated probit function of several explanatory variables, including the individuals district of residence. The criteria used ranks distributions of individual risks in the same way as would all Von Neumann–Morgenstern (VNM) social planners who respect, in the usual Pareto sense – individuals VNM preferences over individual risks of death. Two criteria are considered in turn. The first criterion assumes that individuals VNM utilities are increasing in money and value more a unit of money received in the bad state than one received in the good one. The second criterion makes the extra assumption that individuals are risk averse and have VNM utility functions that are more concave in the bad state than in the good one. Findings - It is found that there is unanimity among all VNM social planners who respect individual VNM preference for considering that the distribution of risks of death in India was better in 2002 than in 1995. This is at least so if individuals can be assumed to prefer more money to less, to be risk averse, and to be more risk averse in the bad state than in the good one. Research limitations/implications - A limitation of the empirical research of the paper is that it concerns only one kind of risk. Future research would apply the tools of this paper to other kinds of risks like risks of crime or risks of unemployment. Practical implications - A practical implication of the paper is to illustrate the usefulness of robust dominance methodology to evaluate the outcome of various policies. Originality/value - The novelty of the paper is to be one of the first to apply empirically new dominance criteria that are specifically designed to compare distributions of risks between individuals. It is certainly the first paper to apply the tool to appraise the distribution of risks of death in India.

Poverty and Well‐Being in Indian Cities During the Reforms Era

This paper seeks to understand temporal changes in poverty and well-being in Indian cities during the era of economic reforms. The evidence on improvements in well being is mixed. During this period, there was an increase in the number of urban poor. Using two nationally representative samples, we compare the joint distribution of monthly per capita expenditure (a private good) and access to drainage (a public good) in slums and non-slum areas of Indian cities to understand changes in well being. A comparison at two points in time, 1993 and 2002, suggests that the share of slum dwellers in urban poor has declined. However, we do not find evidence for improvement in the well-being of slum dwellers over time. We do find that non-slum urban dwellers are better off in 2002 compared to 1993.