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Affirmative Action, Education and Gender: Evidence from India

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  • Cassan, Guilhem

Abstract

We use a unique natural experiment in order to assess the impact of positive discrimination in India on targeted groups’ educational attainment. We take advantage of the harmonization of the Scheduled Castes lists within the Indian states taking place in 1976 to measure the increase of the educational attainment of the new beneficiaries, taking the castes already on the list as a control group. We show that this policy had heterogenous effects across genders, with males benefiting from the SC status and females remaining essentially unaffected. We show that this translated into a differential increase in literacy and numeracy, and propose a novel method to measure the latter.

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  • Cassan, Guilhem, 2013. "Affirmative Action, Education and Gender: Evidence from India," CEPREMAP Working Papers (Docweb) 1310, CEPREMAP.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpm:docweb:1310
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    Cited by:

    1. Priscila S. dos Santos & Kalinca L. Becker & Sibele V. de Oliveira, 2023. "Race‐based affirmative action for higher education in Brazil: Impact assessment on performance, time, and delay in completion," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(1), pages 247-267, February.
    2. Cassan,Guilhem & Keniston,Daniel & Kleineberg,Tatjana Karina, 2021. "A Division of Laborers : Identity and Efficiency in India," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9544, The World Bank.
    3. Mitra Akhtari & Natalie Bau & Jean-William Laliberté, 2024. "Affirmative Action and Precollege Human Capital," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 16(1), pages 1-32, January.
    4. Munshi, K., 2017. "Caste and the Indian Economy," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1759, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    5. Guilhem Cassan & Milan Van Steenvoort, 2021. "Political Regime and COVID 19 death rate: efficient, biasing or simply different autocracies ?," Papers 2101.09960, arXiv.org.
    6. Islam, Asad & Pakrashi, Debayan & Sahoo, Soubhagya & Wang, Liang Choon & Zenou, Yves, 2021. "Gender inequality and caste: Field experimental evidence from India," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 190(C), pages 111-124.
    7. Cassan, Guilhem & Steenvoort, Milan Van, 2021. "Political regime and COVID 19 death rate: ecient, biasing or simply dierent autocracies?," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 539, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    8. Bibek Bhattacharya & Ipsu Khadka & Dalhia Mani, 2022. "Shaking Up (and Keeping Intact) the Old Boys’ Network: The Impact of the Mandatory Gender Quota on the Board of Directors in India," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 177(4), pages 763-778, May.
    9. Utteeyo Dasgupta & Subha Mani & Smriti Sharma & Saurabh Singhal, 2023. "Social Identity, Behavior, and Personality: Evidence from India," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 59(4), pages 472-489, April.
    10. Deshpande, Ashwini & Ramachandran, Rajesh, 2019. "Traditional hierarchies and affirmative action in a globalizing economy: Evidence from India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 63-78.
    11. Vieira, Renato Schwambach & Arends-Kuenning, Mary, 2019. "Affirmative action in Brazilian universities: Effects on the enrollment of targeted groups," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    12. Moeeni, Safoura & Wei, Feng, 2022. "The labor market returns to unobserved skills: Evidence from a gender quota," CLEF Working Paper Series 53, Canadian Labour Economics Forum (CLEF), University of Waterloo.
    13. Guilhem Cassan & Marc Sangnier, 2020. "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité... Contaminé? Estimating the impact of French municipal elections on COVID-19 spread in France," Working Papers halshs-02877917, HAL.
    14. Guilhem Cassan & Marc Sangnier, 2022. "The impact of 2020 French municipal elections on the spread of COVID-19," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 35(3), pages 963-988, July.
    15. Roy van der Weide & Melinda Vigh, 2018. "Intergenerational mobility, human capital accumulation, and growth in India," WIDER Working Paper Series 187, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    16. Gaurav Khanna, 2020. "Does Affirmative Action Incentivize Schooling? Evidence from India," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 102(2), pages 219-233, May.
    17. Roy van der Weide & Melinda Vigh, 2018. "Intergenerational mobility, human capital accumulation, and growth in India," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2018-187, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    18. Cassan, Guilhem & Vandewalle, Lore, 2021. "Identities and public policies: Unexpected effects of political reservations for women in India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    19. Kumar, Anand & Sahoo, Soham, 2021. "Social Identity and STEM Choice: Evidence from Higher Secondary Schooling in India," GLO Discussion Paper Series 900, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    20. Fenske, James & Wang, Shizhuo, 2020. "Tradition and mortality: Evidence from twin infanticide in Africa," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 525, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    21. Subedi, Mukti Nath & Rafiq, Shuddhasattwa & Ulker, Aydogan, 2022. "Effects of Affirmative Action on Educational and Labour Market Outcomes: Evidence from Nepal's Reservation Policy," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 200(C), pages 443-463.
    22. Utteeyo Dasgupta & Subha Mani & Smriti Sharma & Saurabh Singhal, 2020. "Social Identity, Behavior, and Personality," Working Papers 308280016, Lancaster University Management School, Economics Department.
    23. Sugata Bag & Suman Seth & Barnali Basak, 2023. "Heterogeneous effect of the Indian affirmative action: The role of caste certificates," Working papers 339, Centre for Development Economics, Delhi School of Economics.
    24. Jai Mohan Pandit & Bino Paul, 2023. "Gender Diversity, Sustainable Development Goals and Human Resource Management Practices in Higher Education," Indian Journal of Human Development, , vol. 17(1), pages 111-130, April.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    scheduled caste; quota; positive discrimination; gender;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I24 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Inequality
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods

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