Old age poverty in the Indian States: What do the household data tell us?

In the absence of any official measures of old age poverty, this paper uses National Sample Survey household-level data to investigate the extent and nature of living standards and incidence of poverty among elderly in sixteen major states in India. We construct both individual and household-level poverty indices for the elderly and examine the sensitivity of these poverty indices to different equivalence scales and size economies in consumption. Our analysis highlights the complex nature of old age poverty in the Indian states. While poverty estimates taking into account equivalence scale and size economies in consumption suggest that households with elderly members are less poor than others, the interpretation of this result is more complex. Further analysis suggests that the results are partly a function of differences in demographic composition of the households and a possible survivorship bias due to positive correlation between household incomes and life expectancy. After correcting for the possible sources of bias (including the survivorship bias), there is evidence that poverty is increased by the presence of older elderly (75 and above) in all states. Meanwhile, the conclusion that households with elderly aged sixty and above are less poor appears to be robust across most states

Elite dominance and under-investment in mass education: Disparity in the social development of the Indian states, 1960-92

Literacy rates continue to be strikingly low among women and low caste population compared to the general population not only in any Indian state, but more so in the worst performing ones. The present paper offers an explanation of this disparate development in terms of the hypothesis of elite dominance that discriminates against women and low-caste people and systematically under-invests in mass education. We experiment with various indirect economic and political measures of elite dominance. Results based on the Indian state-level data for the period 1960-92 suggest that higher share of land held by the top 5% of the population (a) lowers spending on education as well as total developmental spending and (b) increases total non-developmental spending. (c) Greater proportion of minority representations (female and low caste members) in the ruling government however fails to have any perceptible impact on both development (including education) and non-development spending in our sample. (d) While underinvestment in education by the elite is supported by the lack of demand for education from the poorer population (who are often the marginalised people), greater initiatives of the state to enact land reform legislations enhance the spending on education

Elderly health, wealth and coresidence with adult children in rural India

Little is known about the living conditions of a growing number of elderly in India who predominantly coreside with their children. Mutual sharing of responsibilities is important in coresidency arrangements involving exchange of financial and other services between the elderly and their coresident children. The paper focuses on health and wealth effects of elderly coresidency arrangements. In an attempt to redress the resultant endogeneity bias, we estimate a correlated recursive system of equations. There is evidence that the probability of coresidence is lower for those disadvantaged older elderly who lack health, wealth or both, thus necessitating social protection

Nonrelativistic Conformal Field Theories in the Large Charge Sector

We study Schr\"odinger invariant field theories (nonrelativistic conformal field theories) in the large charge (particle number) sector. We do so by constructing the effective field theory (EFT) for a Goldstone boson of the associated $U(1)$ symmetry in a harmonic potential. This EFT can be studied semi-classically in a large charge expansion. We calculate the dimensions of the lowest lying operators, as well as correlation functions of charged operators. We find universal behavior of three point function in large charge sector. We comment on potential applications to fermions at unitarity and critical anyon systems.Comment: 24 page

Quest for consistent modelling of statistical decay of the compound nucleus

A statistical model description of heavy ion induced fusion-fission reactions is presented where shell effects, collective enhancement of level density, tilting away effect of compound nuclear spin and dissipation are included. It is shown that the inclusion of all these effects provides a consistent picture of fission where fission hindrance is required to explain the experimental values of both pre-scission neutron multiplicities and evaporation residue cross-sections in contrast to some of the earlier works where a fission hindrance is required for pre-scission neutrons but a fission enhancement for evaporation residue cross-sections.Comment: 14 pages, 2 figure

Inversion of 2 wavelength Lidar data for cloud properties

The inversion of the lidar equation to derive quantitative properties of the atmosphere has continued to present considerable difficulty. The results of a study in which Klett's procedure was utilized for the analysis of cloud backscatter measurements made simulataneously at two ruby lidar wavelengths (694nm,347nmm) are presented. With one lidar system a cloud is probed at the two wavelength and the backscatter measured simulataneously by separate receivers. As a result two sigma profiles which should differ only because the wavlength dependence of the scattering. Experimental data presented to demonstrate the effects and the implications of the applications of the inversion method will be discussed