Income mobility across castes in India: a longitudinal analysis

Apurva Bhatnagar ()
Additional contact information
Apurva Bhatnagar: Jawaharlal Nehru University

Indian Economic Review, 2023, vol. 58, issue 2, No 5, 371 pages

Abstract: Abstract This paper employs two waves of longitudinal datasets between 1993–1994 and 2004–2005 and 2004–2005 and 2011–2012 to investigate the differences in income mobility across caste groups in India. We analyse three sets of nationally representative data from the Human Development Profile of India (HDPI) 1993–1994 and the Indian Human Development Surveys 2004–2005 and 2011–2012. Moving away from traditional measures, we rely on a graphical depiction of mobility using density curves and growth incidence curves (GIC) to analyse potential differences in relative income across caste groups. We also support our results using income elasticity regressions and controlled for region, religion, source of income, and education in the base year and state fixed effects. The results reflect that starting from a similar base period income quartile, upper caste households are likely to experience higher growth in their income position compared to SCs and STs. Despite this, households from scheduled castes have shown a slight improvement in their average income positions. The enduring nature of caste-based income disparities is evident, underscoring its potential role in determining economic outcomes in contemporary India, even after accounting for prominent socio-economic factors.

Keywords: Income mobility; Castes; Elasticity of income; Longitudinal analysis; Growth incidence curves; Density curves (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s41775-023-00207-7 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:inecre:v:58:y:2023:i:2:d:10.1007_s41775-023-00207-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.springer.com/economics/journal/41775

DOI: 10.1007/s41775-023-00207-7

Access Statistics for this article

Indian Economic Review is currently edited by Uday Bhanu Sinha, Abhijit Banerji, Shreekant Gupta and J.V. Meenakshi

More articles in Indian Economic Review from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().