MPSC 2024 Prelims Paper-I · Question 46 of 100

Correct — option (1), only (c). Relative poverty is defined by comparison, and statement (c) is the only one of the four that compares anything: set two income groups side by side and the lower of them counts as poor relative to the higher. Every other statement fixes a standard that does not look sideways at anybody else. Statement (a) appeals to the daily calorie requirement of the human body, statement (b) to the income needed to meet basic needs, and statement (d) defines poverty as the inability to meet basic needs — three different ways of stating an absolute standard, one that could in principle be written down once and applied unchanged in any country and any decade. That is the whole distinction the question is built on. Absolute poverty asks whether a household can reach a fixed minimum, so it can in principle be eliminated: raise everyone above the line and the count goes to zero. Relative poverty asks where a household stands in the distribution of its own society, so it moves whenever the distribution moves and it does not disappear merely because everybody has become richer — a society in which every income doubles has exactly the same relative poverty as before, while its absolute poverty may have vanished. This is why relative poverty is in practice a measure of inequality wearing the vocabulary of poverty, and why it remains the operative concept in rich countries that long ago pushed their populations above any subsistence line. Only statement (c) carries that comparative sense, so the restrictive choice is the answer.

• (2)(a) and (b) — Statements (a) and (b) are both absolute criteria: a daily calorie requirement of the body, and the income needed to buy basic needs. Both are true statements about poverty in general and both underpin India's own official poverty line, which began life as the expenditure required to purchase a fixed calorie norm. But neither compares one group with another, and without a comparison there is nothing relative about the measure — a household meeting the calorie norm is not poor on this test however far below its neighbours it may stand. Selecting this pair answers a question about absolute poverty that the stem did not ask.
• (3)only (d) — Statement (d) — poverty as the condition of not being able to meet basic needs — is the textbook definition of absolute poverty, and that is precisely why it is the most dangerous choice here. It reads like the most authoritative sentence on the page, and a candidate who is scanning for the best general definition of poverty will stop at it. The needs it refers to are fixed by the requirements of subsistence, not by what anyone else in the society has, so the definition contains no comparison at all and belongs to the other half of the absolute-relative pair.
• (4)(a) and (d) — This combines statement (a), the daily calorie requirement, with statement (d), the inability to meet basic needs. The two sit together comfortably because they are the two halves of the same absolute conception — the biological floor and the definition built on it — which makes the pair look coherent and therefore tempting. Coherence is not the test: both are absolute criteria, neither ranks one income group against another, and the comparative statement the stem is asking about is left unselected.

Poverty is measured in two fundamentally different registers, and most confusion about poverty statistics comes from mixing them. An absolute measure fixes a line in terms of what a person needs to survive and function — a calorie requirement converted into money, or a basket of food, fuel, clothing and shelter — and counts everyone below it. Because the line is anchored outside the income distribution, absolute poverty can fall to zero as an economy grows, and international comparisons using a common line are possible. A relative measure fixes the line as a fraction of what is normal in that society, typically a percentage of median income, and counts everyone who falls too far behind. Because the line moves with the distribution, relative poverty is a statement about inequality: it can rise in a growing economy if the gains are concentrated, and it cannot be abolished by growth alone. The two answer different policy questions. Absolute poverty asks whether the state has secured subsistence for everyone; relative poverty asks whether a household can participate in the ordinary life of its society — send children to the same kind of school, hold the same kind of job, meet the same social obligations — which is a standard that necessarily rises as the society becomes richer.

MPSC's poverty questions almost always turn on this absolute-relative distinction, because it is the one place where a candidate's intuition reliably fails: the everyday meaning of the word poverty is absolute, so an item asking about relative poverty attracts answers drawn from the absolute vocabulary of calories and basic needs. The safeguard is mechanical and worth practising — read every statement and ask whether it mentions or implies a comparison with somebody else. If it does not, it cannot be a criterion of relative poverty however true it may be. India's own official estimates are absolute, built from committee-recommended baskets, which is why an Indian candidate's stock of remembered poverty facts is almost entirely absolute and needs the comparative case deliberately added to it. The same distinction reappears in questions on inequality measures, on the Lorenz curve and the Gini coefficient, and on why poverty can remain a live political issue in high-income countries.

• Relative poverty is defined by position within the income distribution — a household counts as poor if its income falls too far below the prevailing standard of its own society — so it is a comparative and essentially distributional concept.
• Absolute poverty is defined against a fixed subsistence standard such as a calorie norm or a basic-needs basket, so it can in principle be eliminated by raising every household above that fixed line.
• Because the relative line moves with the distribution, relative poverty is unchanged by a uniform rise in all incomes and can worsen during growth if the gains are concentrated at the top.
• India's official poverty estimation has been absolute in construction, originating in the daily calorie norms of 2,400 in rural and 2,100 in urban areas converted into the corresponding monthly consumption expenditure.
• Relative poverty remains the operative measure in high-income countries, where subsistence lines have long been crossed and the policy question is participation in ordinary social life rather than physical survival.

• Reaching for the most authoritative-sounding general definition of poverty when the stem has specifically asked about the relative variety
• Assuming that a statement mentioning basic needs or calories must belong to any poverty question, when both are markers of the absolute measure
• Believing that economic growth eliminates relative poverty, when a uniform rise in all incomes leaves the relative measure exactly where it was
• Selecting a coherent-looking pair of statements because they fit each other, rather than because each answers the question actually asked

Poverty appears in MPSC papers most often as a definitional statement list of this kind, where several statements are true of poverty in general and only one is true of the specific variety named in the stem. It also appears as committee-and-line recall, and as a distinction question pairing poverty with inequality or with unemployment. The reliable technique across all three shapes is to read the qualifying adjective in the stem — relative, absolute, chronic, transient, multidimensional — as the actual subject of the question, since the Commission builds its distractors out of statements that would have been correct had that adjective been different.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following statements about relative poverty is correct ?

  • (a)It is measured against a fixed calorie norm
  • (b)It can be eliminated by a uniform proportionate rise in all incomes
  • (c)It is measured by a household's position relative to the prevailing standard of its own society
  • (d)It applies only to low-income countries

  Answer(c) It is measured by a household's position relative to the prevailing standard of its own society. A fixed calorie norm is the mark of an absolute measure; a uniform proportionate rise in all incomes leaves the relative distribution untouched and so leaves relative poverty unchanged; and relative poverty is in fact the operative concept in high-income countries.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  India's official poverty line, in its original construction, was anchored to which of the following ?

  • (a)A fixed percentage of median household income
  • (b)A daily calorie norm converted into monthly consumption expenditure
  • (c)The minimum wage notified by the states
  • (d)The average expenditure of the bottom three deciles

  Answer(b) A daily calorie norm converted into monthly consumption expenditure — 2,400 calories a day in rural areas and 2,100 in urban areas, translated into the expenditure needed to obtain them. That construction makes the Indian line an absolute one; a fixed percentage of median income would have made it relative.