IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fas/journl/v1y2011i2p108-133.html

Income Inequality and Caste in Village India

Author

Listed:
  • Vikas Rawal

    (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, vikasrawal@agrarianresearch.org.)

  • Madhura Swaminathan

    (Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata.)

Abstract

In this paper, we examine inequality in incomes between households of different castes in rural India, using a unique dataset comprising household data from a cross-section of eight villages across four States. The focus of this paper is on Dalit or Scheduled Caste households. We begin with very simple measures of differences between groups, such as proportional representation in different quintiles and the frequency distribution of households across income levels in different social groups. We then estimate a standard GE(2) inequality index along with its decomposition by caste. Lastly, we compute an alternative benchmark for assessing the share of between-group inequality in total inequality as suggested by Elbers, Lanjouw, Mistiaen, and Ozler (ELMO 2008). Our analysis shows high levels of income inequality between households of different caste groups.

Suggested Citation

  • Vikas Rawal & Madhura Swaminathan, 2011. "Income Inequality and Caste in Village India," Journal, Review of Agrarian Studies, vol. 1(2), pages 108-133, July-Dece.
    • Handle: RePEc:fas:journl:v:1:y:2011:i:2:p:108-133
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ras.org.in/index.php?Abstract=income_inequality_and_caste_in_village_india
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Shukla, Prakash Kumar & Reddy A, Bheemeshwar & Kumar, Dushyant, 2024. "Class in caste: Inequalities in human capital investments in children in India," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    2. Vijesh V Krishna & Lagesh M Aravalath & Surjit Vikraman, 2019. "Does caste determine farmer access to quality information?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(1), pages 1-22, January.
    3. Singh, Shamsher, . "Residential Segregation and Access to Basic Amenities: A Village-Level Case Study," Review of Agrarian Studies, Foundation for Agrarian Studies, vol. 5(2).
    4. I Maruthi & Pesala Peter, 2018. "Caste discrimination practices in rural Karnataka," Working Papers 418, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore.
    5. Krishna, V. & Vikraman, S. & Aravalath, L., 2018. "Caste-based social segregation and access to public extension services in India," 2018 Conference, July 28-August 2, 2018, Vancouver, British Columbia 276944, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    6. Soumya Balasubramanya & David Stifel & Muzna Alvi & Claudia Ringler, 2022. "The role of social identity in improving access to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and health services: Evidence from Nepal," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 40(4), July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    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:fas:journl:v:1:y:2011:i:2:p:108-133. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Prof. VK Ramachandran (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.ras.org.in .

    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.