IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ind/igiwpp/2018-003.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Inequality, employment and public policy

Author

Listed:
  • S. Mahendra Dev

    (Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research)

Abstract

This paper examines dimensions of inequality including labour market inequalities and discusses public policies needed for reduction in inequalities. It discusses both inequality of outcomes and inequality of opportunities. In terms of income, India is the second highest inequality country in the world next to South Africa. Wealth inequalities are also high in India. Most of the inequalities will have labour market dimension. Labour market inequalities can be found across sectors, wages and earnings, quality of work, labour market access and, between organised and unorganised sectors. On public policies and inequalities, the paper discusses redistribution measures, macro policies, sectoral policies and impact on employment, social policies such as education, health, hunger and malnutrition, social protection, corruption, gender disparities and climate change. The paper argues for fundamentals change to human capital and universal basic services. Investments in social infrastructure, health, education, affirmative action and provision of public services can lead to the creation of egalitarian society.

Suggested Citation

  • S. Mahendra Dev, 2018. "Inequality, employment and public policy," Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai Working Papers 2018-003, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, India.
    • Handle: RePEc:ind:igiwpp:2018-003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.igidr.ac.in/pdf/publication/WP-2018-003.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ravi S. Srivastava, 2016. "Myth and reality of labour flexibility in India," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 59(1), pages 1-38, March.
    2. Christoph Lakner & Branko Milanovic, 2016. "Global Income Distribution: From the Fall of the Berlin Wall to the Great Recession," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 30(2), pages 203-232.
    3. Sher Singh Verick, 2016. "Manufacturing and jobs: is India different?," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 59(1), pages 57-84, March.
    4. S.Mahendra Dev, 2016. "The Problem of Inequality," Working Papers id:11526, eSocialSciences.
    5. Maendra Dev, S., 2015. "India Development Report 2015," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199459452.
    6. Herring, Ronald J. & Edwards, Rex M., 1983. "Guaranteeing employment to the rural poor: Social functions and class interests in the employment guarantee scheme in Western India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 11(7), pages 575-592, July.
    7. T. N. Srinivasan, 2017. "Planning, Poverty and Political Economy of Reforms: A Tribute to Suresh D. Tendulkar," India Studies in Business and Economics, in: K.L. Krishna & Vishwanath Pandit & K. Sundaram & Pami Dua (ed.), Perspectives on Economic Development and Policy in India, chapter 0, pages 3-32, Springer.
    8. International Food Policy Research Institute, 2016. "Global Food Policy Report 2016," Working Papers id:10538, eSocialSciences.
    9. Piketty, Thomas & Chancel, Lucas, 2017. "Indian income inequality, 1922-2014: From British Raj to Billionaire Raj ?," CEPR Discussion Papers 12409, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    10. Himanshu, 2017. "Growth, structural change and wages in India: recent trends," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 60(3), pages 309-331, September.
    11. Lawrence Haddad & Harold Alderman & Simon Appleton & Lina Song & Yisehac Yohannes, 2003. "Reducing Child Malnutrition: How Far Does Income Growth Take Us?," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 17(1), pages 107-131, June.
    12. Atkinson, Anthony B., 2015. "Inequality: what can be done?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 101810, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    13. S. Mahendra Dev, 2016. "The Problem of inequality," Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai Working Papers 2016-029, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, India.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. S. Mahendra Dev, 2018. "Tranformation of Indian agriculture: Growth, iclusiveness and sustainability," Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai Working Papers 2018-026, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, India.
    2. Aswini Kumar Mishra & Vedant Bhardwaj, 2021. "Wealth distribution and accounting for changes in wealth inequality: empirical evidence from India, 1991–2012," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 54(2), pages 585-620, May.
    3. Gerry Rodgers, 2020. "Labour and Employment in India: A 50-Year Perspective," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 63(1), pages 1-19, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. S. Mahendra Dev, 2018. "Inequality, Employment and Public Policy," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 61(1), pages 1-42, March.
    2. Himanshu, 2019. "Inequality in India: A review of levels and trends," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2019-42, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    3. Aswini Kumar Mishra & Vedant Bhardwaj, 2021. "Wealth distribution and accounting for changes in wealth inequality: empirical evidence from India, 1991–2012," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 54(2), pages 585-620, May.
    4. Boarini, Romina & Causa, Orsetta & Fleurbaey, Marc & Grimalda, Gianluca & Woolard, Ingrid, 2018. "Reducing inequalities and strengthening social cohesion through inclusive growth: A roadmap for action," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 12, pages 1-26.
    5. Varsha S Kulkarni & Raghav Gaiha, 2018. "Beyond Piketty: a new perspective on poverty and inequality in India," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series 332018, GDI, The University of Manchester.
    6. Rory Horner & David Hulme, 2019. "From International to Global Development: New Geographies of 21st Century Development," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 50(2), pages 347-378, March.
    7. Amer Ahmed & Maurizio Bussolo & Marcio Cruz & Delfin S. Go & Israel Osorio-Rodarte, 2020. "Global Inequality in a more educated world," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 18(4), pages 585-616, December.
    8. Edwin Fourrier-Nicolai & Michel Lubrano, 2019. "The Effect of Aspirations on Inequality: Evidence from the German Reunification using Bayesian Growth Incidence Curves," Working Papers halshs-02122371, HAL.
    9. Glucksberg, Luna & Russell-Prywata, Louise, 2020. "Elites and inequality: a case study of plutocratic philanthropy in the UK," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 106162, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    10. Leopoldo Tornarolli & Matías Ciaschi & Luciana Galeano, 2018. "Income Distribution in Latin America. The Evolution in the Last 20 Years: A Global Approach," CEDLAS, Working Papers 0234, CEDLAS, Universidad Nacional de La Plata.
    11. S. Mahendra Dev, 2021. "Beyond India @ 75: Growth, inclusion and sustainability," Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai Working Papers 2021-026, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, India.
    12. Nora Lustig, 2020. "The ``missing rich'' in household surveys: causes and correction approaches," Working Papers 520, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    13. Facundo Alvaredo & Lydia Assouad & Thomas Piketty, 2019. "Measuring lnequality in the Middle East 1990–2016: The World’s Most Unequal Region?," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 65(4), pages 685-711, December.
    14. Anand, Sudhir & Segal, Paul, 2017. "Who Are the Global Top 1%?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 111-126.
    15. Peter Lanjouw & Hai-Anh Dang, 2018. "Inequality trends and dynamics in India: The bird’s-eye and the granular perspectives," WIDER Working Paper Series 189, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    16. Lydia Assouad & Lucas Chancel & Marc Morgan, 2018. "Extreme Inequality: Evidence from Brazil, India, the Middle East, and South Africa," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 108, pages 119-123, May.
    17. Amarante, Verónica & Galván, Marco & Mancero, Xavier, 2016. "Inequality in Latin America: a global measurement," Revista CEPAL, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), April.
    18. David Coady, 2015. "Designing and Evaluating Social Safety Nets: Theory, Evidence, and Policy Conclusions," Working Papers id:7496, eSocialSciences.
    19. S. Mahendra Dev, 2018. "Tranformation of Indian agriculture: Growth, iclusiveness and sustainability," Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai Working Papers 2018-026, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, India.
    20. Edwin Fourrier-Nicolai & Michel Lubrano, 2020. "Bayesian Inference for Distributional Changes: The Effect of Western TV on Wage Inequality and Female Participation in Former East Germany," AMSE Working Papers 2027, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Inequality of outcomes; inequality of opportunities; consumption; income; wealth; labour market; wage inequality; fiscal policy; monetary policy; trade policy; human capital; health; education; informal sector; inclusive growth; gender; climate change;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • J28 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Safety; Job Satisfaction; Related Public Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ind:igiwpp:2018-003. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Shamprasad M. Pujar (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/igidrin.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.