The Cost of Being ‘Backward’ in India: Socio-religious Discrimination in the Labour Market

Soumyajit Chakraborty () and Alok Bohara

Indian Journal of Human Development, 2021, vol. 15, issue 2, 252-274

Abstract: Being from backward castes, classes and Muslims in India has an economic cost associated with the nature of institutional discrimination. Using the 2011–2012 National Sample Survey data, this study identifies that caste and religion still rule the modern Indian labour market. We find that discrimination is evident in the socio-religious earnings gaps. While the parametric decompositions suggest that most of these gaps are due to differential human capital endowment, the nonparametric method almost evenly attributes inequality to discrimination and endowment. The results presented in this study suggest that discrimination against Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, Muslims and Other Backward Classes should be included in policy designs to promote equity in the Indian labour market.

Keywords: Decomposition; discrimination; earnings gap; Scheduled Castes; Scheduled Tribes; Muslims; India (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09737030211029634 (text/html)

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:sae:inddev:v:15:y:2021:i:2:p:252-274

DOI: 10.1177/09737030211029634

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Indian Journal of Human Development
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().