Employment status and wealth inequality between scheduled caste and other caste households in India

In the early 1990s, the proponents of the economic reforms believed that liberalization of the market would reduce the economic inequality and benefit the marginalized sections, especially Scheduled Castes, in India. In this context, this study examines the trend of accumulating wealth after economic reforms 1991 by social groups. This has been addressed by the concentration of assets and employment status of households, i.e., self-employment households and employee households. In this study, we also explain why wealth disparities between the caste groups rose significantly after economic reforms in India. This study is based on three rounds of All India Debt and Investment Survey, i.e., 48th round (1991–92), 59th round (2002–2003) and 70th round (2012–13), collected by NSSO. We have applied the Anogi decomposition method to document the inequality and overlapping, within and between the social groups, by employment status of households, i.e., self-employed and paid-employee. The results show that a sudden increase in overall wealth inequality and between caste groups inequality, after economic reforms, was due to a sharp increase in wealth inequalities across the self-employed households in India. It means, after economic reforms, it is the group of self-employed households that has been enforcing the wealth inequality between social groups in India.