Assist. Professor Megha Patnaik, Ph.D.

Poverty Beyond Data

Megha Patnaik, in an article co-authored with Shivangi Mittal, argues that the poverty discussion is too much focused on simplified statistics rather than comprehensive well being. Poverty is measured in India using data recorded in surveys of millions of households. These data have only a few dimensions. The income or expenditure they measure is not meaningful without a context, for instance of public goods and services provision. Standard poverty measures tend to dehumanize every poor household into a statistic, ignoring family histories, big decisions and a family’s way of life. Large-scale survey measures of wealth must also be standardized across the population, requiring several simplifications. An attempt at measuring well-being is the United Nations’ World Happiness Report, which uses data from surveys about life evaluations to measure a country’s socio-economic development.

Ms. Patnaik’s research interests include labor, macroeconomics, finance, and entrepreneurship, and in particular management, innovation, and the determinants of firm performance.

Megha Patnaik is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics & Finance at LUISS Guido Carli University in Rome and a CEPR Research Affiliate. She holds a PhD in Economics from Stanford University, an MSc in Econometrics and Mathematical Economics from the London School of Economics, and a BSc in Mathematics from St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi. Her work has been published in the American Economic Review and Management Science. She has work experience as a data scientist at Intuit headquarters in Silicon Valley and also at the Indian Ministry of Finance in the Capital Markets Division.