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Affirmation Action, Education and Gender: Evidence from India

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  • Guilhem Cassan

    (Center for Research in the Economics of Development, University of Namur)

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 bene ciaries. We show that this policy had heterogenous e ects across genders, with males bene ting from the SC status and females remaining essentially una ected. We show that this translated into a di erential increase in literacy and numeracy, and propose a novel method to measure the latter.

Suggested Citation

  • Guilhem Cassan, 2014. "Affirmation Action, Education and Gender: Evidence from India," Working Papers 1401, University of Namur, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:nam:wpaper:1401
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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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