Occupational concentration and specialized knowledge: evidence from census of India

Vasavi Bhatt ()
Additional contact information
Vasavi Bhatt: Indian Institute of Management Tiruchirappalli

The Annals of Regional Science, 2025, vol. 74, issue 3, No 11, 30 pages

Abstract: Abstract This paper examines the occupational concentration in India using locational Gini, estimated from the Census of India 2001 and 2011 dataset, which has district-level information on more than 400 occupations. The concentration of employment is generally assessed with respect to industries. The paper shifts the focus to occupational concentration, as occupations provide another perspective on the distribution of economic activity through the lens of human capital, skills, and tasks. It furthers the literature by assessing the spatial distribution of occupation, i.e., what workers do rather than what workers make (industry) in a developing country. Using a highly disaggregated dataset and different statistical techniques, the study analyses the determinants of occupational concentration in India. It finds that occupations with specialized knowledge, i.e., a knowledge base higher or lower than an average Indian occupation, also an indicator of labor market pooling, are more geographically concentrated. These findings hold good against various robustness tests. The results are also significant for male and female workers, despite their dissimilar occupational distribution. The importance of evaluating the distribution of occupations stems from its impact on various labor market outcomes, namely skills distribution, earnings, and regional development. Thus, this study is also relevant to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 8, which focuses on decent work and productive employment.

JEL-codes: D83 J21 J24 R10 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00168-025-01401-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
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:spr:anresc:v:74:y:2025:i:3:d:10.1007_s00168-025-01401-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://link.springer.com/journal/168

DOI: 10.1007/s00168-025-01401-6

Access Statistics for this article

The Annals of Regional Science is currently edited by Martin Andersson, E. Kim and Janet E. Kohlhase

More articles in The Annals of Regional Science from Springer, Western Regional Science Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().