Is One Simple Poverty Scorecard Enough for India?

Mark Schreiner

Center for Social Development, Washington University in Saint Louis

(August 2006)

Is one simple poverty scorecard enough for India? Using out-of-sample bootstrap tests, this paper compares accuracy for an All-India scorecard versus urban- and rural-specific scorecards. Even though India is large and diverse, there is no evidence that segmentation provides large increases in accuracy.