On the basis of which of the following options do the "Economists" identify the poor?

Occupation and ownership of assets

The correct answer is Option 3: Occupation and ownership of assets

Economists identify the poor on the basis of their occupation and ownership of assets. They state that the rural poor work mainly as landless agricultural laborers, cultivators with very small landholdings, or landless laborers, who are engaged in a variety of non-agricultural jobs, and tenant cultivators with small land holdings. The urban poor is largely the overflow of the rural poor who had migrated to urban areas in search of alternative employment and livelihood, laborers who do a variety of casual jobs, and the self-employed who sell a variety of things on roadsides and are engaged in various activities.

Option 1 is not correct: The question asks about the way the 'economists' identify the poor. The determination of poor on the basis of Calories is done by Government and not economists. Economists are critical of this approach for identifying the poor as deatiled below.

In India, there are many ways of measuring poverty. One way is to determine it by the monetary value (per capita expenditure) of the minimum calorie intake that was estimated at 2,400 calories for a rural person and 2,100 for a person in the urban area. Based on this, in 2011-12, the poverty line was defined for rural areas as consumption worth Rs 816 per person a month and for urban areas it was Rs 1,000.

Economists state that a major problem with this mechanism is that it groups all the poor together and does not differentiate between the very poor and the other poor. Also this mechanism takes into account expenditure on food and a few select items as proxy for income, economists question its basis. This mechanism is helpful in identifying the poor as a group to be taken care of by the government, but it would be difficult to identify who among the poor need help the most. There are many factors, other than income and assets, which are associated with poverty; for instance, the accessibility to basic education, health care, drinking water and sanitation. They need to be considered to develop Poverty Line. The existing mechanism for determining the Poverty Line also does not take into consideration social factors that trigger and perpetuate poverty such as illiteracy, ill health, lack of access to resources, discrimination or lack of civil and political freedoms. The aim of poverty alleviation schemes should be to improve human lives by expanding the range of things that a person could be and could do, such as to be healthy and well-nourished, to be knowledgeable and participate in the life of a community. From this point of view, development is about removing the obstacles to the things that a person can do in life, such as illiteracy, ill health, lack of access to resources, or lack of civil and political freedoms.

Due to various limitations in the official estimation of poverty, scholars have attempted to find alternative methods. For instance, Amartya Sen, noted Nobel Laureate, has developed an index known as Sen Index. There are other tools such as Poverty Gap Index and Squared Poverty Gap.