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Invariant features of spatial inequality in consumption: The case of India

Author

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  • Chatterjee, Arnab
  • Chakrabarti, Anindya S.
  • Ghosh, Asim
  • Chakraborti, Anirban
  • Nandi, Tushar K.

Abstract

We study the distributional features and inequality of consumption expenditure across India, for different states, castes, religion and urban–rural divide. We find that even though the aggregate measures of inequality are fairly diversified across states, the consumption distributions show near identical statistics, once properly normalized. This feature is seen to be robust with respect to variations in sociological and economic factors. We also show that state-wise inequality seems to be positively correlated with growth which is in accord with the traditional idea of Kuznets’ curve. We present a brief model to account for the invariance found empirically and show that better but riskier technology draws can create a positive correlation between inequality and growth.

Suggested Citation

  • Chatterjee, Arnab & Chakrabarti, Anindya S. & Ghosh, Asim & Chakraborti, Anirban & Nandi, Tushar K., 2016. "Invariant features of spatial inequality in consumption: The case of India," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 442(C), pages 169-181.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:442:y:2016:i:c:p:169-181
    DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2015.09.019
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    Cited by:

    1. Aadil Ahmad Ganaie & Sajad ahmad Bhat & Bandi Kamaiah, 2018. "Macro-determinants of Income Inequality: An Empirical Analysis in case of India," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 38(1), pages 309-325.
    2. Kiran Sharma & Anirban Chakraborti, 2016. "Physicists' approach to studying socio-economic inequalities: Can humans be modelled as atoms?," Papers 1606.06051, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2018.
    3. Anand Sahasranaman & Henrik Jeldtoft Jensen, 2021. "Dynamics of reallocation within India’s income distribution," Indian Economic Review, Springer, vol. 56(1), pages 1-23, June.
    4. Anindya S. Chakrabarti & Arnab Chatterjee & Tushar Nandi & Asim Ghosh & Anirban Chakraborti, 2018. "Quantifying invariant features of within-group inequality in consumption across groups," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 13(3), pages 469-490, October.
    5. Anand Sahasranaman, 2020. "Long term dynamics of poverty transitions in India," Papers 2010.06954, arXiv.org.
    6. Chatterjee, Arnab & Ghosh, Asim & Chakrabarti, Bikas K., 2017. "Socio-economic inequality: Relationship between Gini and Kolkata indices," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 466(C), pages 583-595.

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