ABSTRACT
Significant gaps in poverty knowledge stand in the way of faster poverty reduction. Most important, we do not know much about how poverty gets created. Policy is directed toward raising people out of poverty. How people become poor in the first place is hardly ever discussed. No counts are maintained in India (or any other country) about how many people were born into poverty and how many others fell into poverty afresh. We also do not know with any degree of certainty how many previously poor people have escaped from poverty in any given period.
