Secondly, care needs to be taken when selecting an appropriate poverty headcount ratio from the range of measures available. Official poverty headcount ratios for India and the various state are computed by the national Planning Commission, using household consumption data collected by the National Sample Survey every fifth year. State-level governments also produce poverty headcounts using a different methodology and data source; the BPL household census data<sup>8</sup> . Independent estimates of poverty have also been proposed, notably by Deaton (2003), using the NSS data. Confounding matters even further, the NSS survey rounds conducted during our study period (1993-1994, 19992000 and 2004-2006) are particularly controversial because of changes in the NSS sample design and the Planning Commission’s methodology between 1993-1994 and 1999-2000. These changes have raised substantial concern among researchers, notably Deaton (2003) who proposes further adjustments to make the poverty measures for 19992000 comparable with the previous round.

We note that NFHS-3 does collect information on BPL cardholder status (i.e. whether the household has an official government document verifying eligibility for benefits targeted to households below the poverty line). However, for many reasons, BPL cardholding may not accurately reflect actual BPL status - other factors such as local politics can play a role in their allocation (see for example, Besley, Pande and Rao (2004) and also reports in the popular press). In our sample, 13% of the women in rural areas and 7% of women in urban areas held a BPL card. However, as shown in Table 1, consistent with previous research, card-holders are distributed across all wealth quintiles. Most cardholders are in the middle of the wealth distribution, with a significant minority at the top. Anecdotal evidence about implementation suggests that individuals are only required to present evidence of caste certification, domicile and birth registration for verification by the local authorities (MODE, 2000);<sup>9</sup> in practice, the BPL card may not always be requested for participation in the program. Due to the lack of data for NFHS-1 and 2 and these other issues, we are not able to rely on the BPL cardholder information.

For Haryana, the Planning Commission released rural/urban poverty headcount ratios of 28%/16% in 1993-1994 and 8%/10% in 1999-2000. However, subject to concerns that these figures were not comparable, for 2004-5, the Commission released two sets of numbers based on both methodologies. The 2004-5 figures are either 14%/15% (comparable to 1993-1994) or 9%/11% (approximately but not precisely comparable to 1999-2000). On the other hand, Deaton (2003) computes considerably lower estimates of 17% /11% for the rural/urban sector in 1993-4 and 6% / 5% in 1999-2000. Since our primary objective is to capture those most likely to receive ABAD benefits, rather than

> 8 Below-poverty line (BPL) censuses were conducted in 1992, 1997 and 2002. The 1992 BPL census identified BPL on the basis of self-reported income. The 1997 BPL first screened out the ‘visibly non-poor’ on the basis of asset ownership and annual income. A household was then declared poor if their per capita consumption expenditure was less than the official rupee poverty line adopted by the Planning Commission.  The identification formula was changed for the 2002 BPL census, using a proxy for means testing based on indicators of socio-economic quality of life to rank households with the goal of matching Planning Commission headcount ratios. BPL census are also often subject to considerable criticism for implementation irregularities.

> 9 We did not carry out field research hence it is difficult to confirm exactly what is required. See http://faridabad.nic.in/Administration/women&.htm#ABAD

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