India's Occupational Transformation: A Tale of Two Escalators

India's rapid expansion in higher education has coincided with stagnant growth in skilled, white-collar jobs, leading to hyper-competition and underemployment among graduates. Using panel data from the India Human Development Survey (IHDS), this chapter tracks 12,084 young men between 2004–05 and 2011–12 to assess whether college degrees facilitate access to white-collar employment beyond background advantages. Applying a propensity-score stratification framework, the study examines heterogeneous returns to higher education across social origins. In sharp contrast to US patterns where marginalized individuals gain the most from higher education, the occupational benefits of a college degree in India are heavily concentrated among the already privileged. Interestingly, non-graduates from the highest-propensity backgrounds secure whitecollar jobs at higher rates than college-educated men from disadvantaged backgrounds. Thus, while education offers an occupational escalator out of casual work, it moves faster for the privileged, reinforcing existing socioeconomic inequalities.