A Distributional Analysis of Social Group Inequality in Rural India

Mehtabul Azam

Working Papers from eSocialSciences

Abstract: This paper examines the differences in welfare, as measured by per capita expenditure (PCE), between social groups in rural India across the entire welfare distribution. The paper establishes that the disadvantage suffered by two historically disadvantaged groups – Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) – is underestimated when the comparison group is Non-SCs/STs rather than general category (mostly higher castes). The ST households are the most disadvantaged followed by the SC and the Other Backward Caste households with respect to general category households, and the disadvantage exists across the entire distribution. Better covariates and better returns to those covariates contribute to the advantage of the general category households. The findings suggest that the policies to raise the human capital and strengthening the other productive assets of the SC and the ST households must remain a focus of attention besides promoting a more active labor market in rural India.[IZA DP No. 3973]

Keywords: India; social groups; inequality; quantile regression decomposit (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cwa and nep-dev
Note: Institutional Papers
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.esocialsciences.org/Download/repecDownl ... &AId=2047&fref=repec

Related works:
Journal Article: A distributional analysis of social group inequality in rural India (2012)
Working Paper: A Distributional Analysis of Social Group Inequality in Rural India (2009)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ess:wpaper:id:2047

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from eSocialSciences
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Padma Prakash ().