Traditional Institutions Meet the Modern World: Caste, Gender, and Schooling Choice in a Globalizing Economy
This paper addresses the question of how traditional institutions interact with the forces of globalization to shape the economic mobility and welfare of particular groups of individuals in the new economy. We explore the role of one such traditional institution?the caste system?in shaping career choices by gender in Bombay using new survey data on school enrollment and income over the past 20 years. We find that male working-class?lower-caste?networks continue to channel boys into local language schools that lead to the traditional occupation, despite the fact that returns to nontraditional white-collar occupations rose substantially in the 1990s, suggesting the possibility of a dynamic inefficiency. In contrast, lower-caste girls, who historically had low labor market participation rates and so did not benefit from the network, are taking full advantage of the opportunities that became available in the new economy by switching rapidly to English schools. (JEL I21, J16, O15, Z13)
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Volume (Year): 96 (2006)
Issue (Month): 4 (September)
Pages: 1225-1252
| Handle: | RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:96:y:2006:i:4:p:1225-1252 |
| Note: | DOI: 10.1257/aer.96.4.1225 |
| Contact details of provider: | Web page: https://www.aeaweb.org/aer/ Email: More information through EDIRC
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References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
- Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson & James A. Robinson, 2000.
"The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation,"
NBER Working Papers
7771, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
- Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson & James A. Robinson, 2001. "The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1369-1401, December.
- Kaivan Munshi, 2003. "Networks In The Modern Economy: Mexican Migrants In The U.S. Labor Market," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 118(2), pages 549-599, May.
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