Quality of living in India: a household level analysis

The present paper purports to investigate the quality of living among the Indian households at state and district level from 2001 to 2011. The study is based on secondary data collected from Registrar General Census Operations, New Delhi. The quality of living has been examined in terms of 5 main dimensions i.e. (i) housing quality, (ii) basic amenities like health, sanitation and cleanliness, electrification, fuel consumption, (iii) banking (iv) information and communication and assets ownerships covering 14 indicators. The spatial variations in quality of living have been portrayed and discussed with the help of composite index. The study portraits visible north-south divide in quality of living among the Indian households. The southern half of India especially the majority of the districts of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Gujarat have witnessed very high and high quality of living at the households level. By comparison, northern, eastern and north eastern states of country have witnessed very poor quality of living in terms of housing quality, electrification, health, sanitation and cleanliness, information, communication, banking and assets ownership. The study shows positive relationship between quality of living and urbanization (0.77), literacy (0.71) and per capita income (0.68) while negative correlation with poverty (-0.80) and population growth (-0.11). The district level analysis reveals that even after the 65 years of planning, only one-tenth districts (63 districts) of the country have witnessed very high and high quality of living whereas half of the districts (about 53% of all districts) have recorded very low or low quality of living at the household level.