Traditional Institutions Meet the Modern World: Caste, Gender, and Schooling Choice in a Globalizing Economy

Kaivan Munshi and Mark Rosenzweig

American Economic Review, 2006, vol. 96, issue 4, 1225-1252

Abstract: This paper addresses the question of how traditional institutions interact with the forces of globalization to shape the economic mobility and welfare of particular groups of individuals in the new economy. We explore the role of one such traditional institution?the caste system?in shaping career choices by gender in Bombay using new survey data on school enrollment and income over the past 20 years. We find that male working-class?lower-caste?networks continue to channel boys into local language schools that lead to the traditional occupation, despite the fact that returns to nontraditional white-collar occupations rose substantially in the 1990s, suggesting the possibility of a dynamic inefficiency. In contrast, lower-caste girls, who historically had low labor market participation rates and so did not benefit from the network, are taking full advantage of the opportunities that became available in the new economy by switching rapidly to English schools. (JEL I21, J16, O15, Z13)

Date: 2006
Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.96.4.1225
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (357)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/aer.96.4.1225 (application/pdf)
http://www.aeaweb.org/aer/data/sept06/20030775_data.zip (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

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:aea:aecrev:v:96:y:2006:i:4:p:1225-1252

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Review is currently edited by Esther Duflo

More articles in American Economic Review from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().