FARM PRODUCTIVITY AND RURAL POVERTY IN INDIA

Armed with new data, we return to an old question from the pages of th is journal: to what extent do India's rural poor shave in agricultural growth? Combining data from 24 household sample surveys spanning 35 y ears with other sources, we estimate a model of the joint determinatio n of consumption-poverty measures, agricultural wages, and food prices . We find that higher farm productivity brought both absolute and rela tive gains to poor rural households. A large share of the gains was vi a wages and prices, though these effects took time. The benefits to th e poor were not confined to those near the poverty line.