Q.Illustrate the difference between rural and urban poverty. Is it correct to say that poverty has shifted from rural to urban areas? Use the trends in the poverty ratio to support your answer.

Rural and urban poverty differ in who the poor are and what they do, but the distribution figures make clear that India's poverty is still overwhelmingly rural.

The rural poor are mainly landless labourers, small and marginal farmers and tenant cultivators; the urban poor are largely migrants from rural areas working as casual labourers and roadside self-employed. Since more t …

Difference between rural and urban poverty:

• The rural poor work mainly as landless agricultural labourers, cultivators with very small landholdings, landless labourers in non-agricultural jobs, and tenant cultivators with small holdings; many are landless or hold only dry/waste land.
• The urban poor are largely the overflow of the rural poor who migrated to towns in search of work; they do casual jobs or are self-employed selling things on roadsides, and are often unemployed or only intermittently employed because industrialisation has not absorbed them.

Has poverty shifted from rural to urban areas? — No. The trends in the poverty ratio show:

1. In 1973-74, more than 80 per cent of the poor resided in rural areas, and this had not changed even in 2011-12 — more than three-fourths of India's poor still reside in villages. …