Coherence between Existing System of Defining Urban Poor with Kuppuswamy and Hashim's System; Which is More Relevant?

Identification of below poverty line (BPL) households is of paramount importance to provide benefits under poverty alleviation and other programs.

(1) To assess households in urban slums in terms of housing, assets, and amenities. (2) To compare three different systems of socioeconomic status (SES) - ration card holders, Modified Kuppuswamy Scale, and Hashim's system.

A cross-sectional, community-based study was conducted in urban slums of field practice area of a medical college, Pune. Considering 35% of urban households in India qualify as poor, sample size of 593 households was calculated. A predesigned, validated, pretested questionnaire was used, covering sociodemographic domains including indicators of three systems. Agreement between these scales was calculated by kappa statistics.

Total 639 households were surveyed covering 3078 slum population. Percentage of BPL families according to possession of yellow ration card, Modified Kuppuswamy Scale, and Hashim's system were 35.99%, 48.67%, and 48.51%, respectively. The proportion of agreement between Kuppuswamy scale and ration card was 55.71% and for Hashim system and ration card was 51.79%.

The present study revealed no agreement between these three systems. Hashim system gives more accurate and realistic picture of SES of the urban slums households owing to its holistic approach.