Cities with suburbs: Evidence from India

For a country like India that contains a large number of Urban Agglomerations (UAs), suburbanisation has drawn little attention of the literature. I focus on this sparsely studied issue in this work. I calculate population, household and employment density gradients for India's UAs, using Mills' two-point technique. Next, I estimate population, household and employment gradient regressions. I find that the size of UA and lagged value of the population gradient explain population suburbanisation, as we would expect. I find evidence from the employment suburbanisation equation that it is the jobs that follow people, and not vice-versa, consistent with what has been found in the literature. In the employment sub-sector regressions, I find that the skills of the labor force are the most important factor explaining suburbanisation of manufacturing, transport, communications and trade/commerce jobs in India's urban areas. I conclude with policy implications.