PONE-D-22-19492Prevalence and correlates of multidimensional child poverty in India during 2015-2021: A multilevel analysisPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Pradhan,

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Additional Editor Comments:

minor revision.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The document is well written and issue is very pertinent. There is a need to research child poverty. It would be better if you add a discussion on child poverty with household poverty. As the document also mentions that the child has different needs and it may be the case that a household that we count as non-poor has poor child (multi-dimensionally).

It would be better to add the this discussion.

Secondly compare the statistics of this study with some published empirical literature so that robustness of the measurement can be highlighted.

Reviewer #2: The article is on important socioeconomic issue of child poverty titled "Prevalence and correlates of multidimensional child poverty in India during 2015-2021: A multilevel analysis". Alkire-Foster methodology is used to estimate the child poverty. The bivariate analysis is used to estimate the prevalence, and the chi-square test was carried out to show the significance level of the association between the outcome variable and its correlates. Later, multilevel logistic regression analyses were performed to find the important cofounder and cluster level variation in child poverty.

The paper is well organized. The author/s has carried out an empirical study. The subject matter of this work is of relevance to the theme of the journal, which would be helpful in the context of analysis of overall literature contribution in the field. The information presented is based on published data. Following are some specific issues/comments for improvement in the quality of the article.

1. The abstract should be in a single paragraph and clearly mentioning the policy implications emerging from it.

2. The introduction section should include significance of study on previous studies and for the policy i.e. rational of the study and it should also include literature gap. Recent studies on the topic should also be included.

3. The choice of methodology is also important. The author(s) has used standard Alkire-Foster methodology which has been used in many studies. The novelty of the methodology should be narrated and should also be mentioned that why it is specifically used.

7. Some recent literature should be added to justify the results.

8. I would like to see more discussion in the discussion section and concluding section by comparing the results with other studies.

9. The policy implications should be added more explicitly based on the results emerging from the article.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Prevalence and correlates of multidimensional child poverty in India during 2015-2021: A multilevel analysis

PONE-D-22-19492R1

Dear Dr. Pradhan,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

Kind regards,

Faisal Abbas, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

accept with minor revision.

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: 1. The manuscript need to be carefully proof read for spellings and grammar correction such as Line 416.

2. The random variation at PSU level and district needs further clarification based on the case of India. Why does the PSU level variation is lesser than district level variation. Identify district level variables that are responsible for random variation and may be incorported in the model for future research.

3. Why did not the researcher test the region level variation (uban/rural)?

4. Diagnostic tests are missing.

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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