IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/19421.html

The Effectiveness of Jobs Reservation: Caste, Religion, and Economic Status in India

Author

Listed:
  • Borooah, Vani
  • Dubey, Amaresh
  • Iyer, Sriya

Abstract

This article investigates the effect of jobs reservation on improving the economic opportunities of persons belonging to India’s Scheduled Castes (SC)and Scheduled Tribes (ST). Using employment data from the 55th NSS round, the authors estimate the probabilities of different social groups in India being in one of three categories of economic status: own account workers; regular salaried or wage workers; casual wage labourers. Theseprobabilities are then used to decompose the difference between a group X and forward caste Hindus in the proportions of their members in regular salaried or wage employment. This decomposition allows us to distinguish between two forms of difference between group X and forward caste Hindus: ‘attribute’ differences and ‘coefficient’ differences. The authors measure the effects of positive discriminationin raising the proportions of ST/SC persons in regular salaried employment, and the discriminatory bias against Muslims who do not benefit from such policies. They conclude that the boost provided by jobs reservation policies was around 5 percentage points. They also conclude that an alternative and more effective way of raising the proportion of men from the SC/ST groups in regular salaried or wageemployment would be to improve theiremployment-related attributes.

Suggested Citation

  • Borooah, Vani & Dubey, Amaresh & Iyer, Sriya, 2007. "The Effectiveness of Jobs Reservation: Caste, Religion, and Economic Status in India," MPRA Paper 19421, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:19421
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/19421/1/MPRA_paper_19421.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Oaxaca, Ronald, 1973. "Male-Female Wage Differentials in Urban Labor Markets," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 14(3), pages 693-709, October.
    2. Alan S. Blinder, 1973. "Wage Discrimination: Reduced Form and Structural Estimates," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 8(4), pages 436-455.
    3. Vani K. Borooah, 2005. "Caste, Inequality, and Poverty in India," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(3), pages 399-414, August.
    4. Vani Borooah & Sriya Iyer, 2005. "Vidya, Veda, and Varna: The influence of religion and caste on education in rural India," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(8), pages 1369-1404.
    5. Schmidt, Peter & Strauss, Robert P, 1975. "The Prediction of Occupation Using Multiple Logit Models," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 16(2), pages 471-486, June.
    6. Phelps, Edmund S, 1972. "The Statistical Theory of Racism and Sexism," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 62(4), pages 659-661, September.
    7. Nielsen, Helena Skyt, 1998. "Discrimination and detailed decomposition in a logit model," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 115-120, October.
    8. Vani K. Borooah, 2001. "How Do Employees of Ethnic Origin Fare on the Occupational Ladder in Britain?," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 48(1), pages 1-26, February.
    9. Vani K. Borooah & John Mangan, 2002. "An Analysis of Occupational Outcomes for Indigenous and Asian Employees in Australia," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 78(240), pages 31-49, March.
    10. Blackaby, D. H. & Leslie, D. G. & Murphy, P. D. & O'Leary, N. C., 1998. "The ethnic wage gap and employment differentials in the 1990s: Evidence for Britain," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 58(1), pages 97-103, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Carlos Grad󸀍, 2012. "Poverty among minorities in the United States: explaining the racial poverty gap for Blacks and Latinos," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(29), pages 3793-3804, October.
    2. Ravi Srivastava, 2019. "Emerging Dynamics of Labour Market Inequality in India: Migration, Informality, Segmentation and Social Discrimination," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 62(2), pages 147-171, June.
    3. Sayema H. Bidisha, 2009. "Labour Market Experience of Male Immigrants and Ethnic Minorities in the UK," Discussion Papers 09/08, University of Nottingham, School of Economics.
    4. Carlos Gradin, 2009. "Why is Poverty So High Among Afro-Brazilians? A Decomposition Analysis of the Racial Poverty Gap," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(9), pages 1426-1452.
    5. Borooah, Vani, 2018. "The Social Orientation of India’s Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) Program," MPRA Paper 90421, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Mehtabul Azam, 2017. "Explaining Caste Differences in Private School Attendance," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(4), pages 1191-1204, November.
    7. Gómez-Echeverry, Santiago, 2024. "Within the cracks of the cosmic race: Income inequalities by race and ethnicity in Latin America," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).
    8. Wazah Pello-Esso & Ulf Gerdtham & Sara Larsson Lönn & Jan Sundquist & Kristina Sundquist, 2025. "Immigrant-Native Wage Gap in Sweden: Do Personality Traits Matter?," Journal of International Migration and Integration, Springer, vol. 26(1), pages 467-489, March.
    9. Powers, Daniel A. & Yun, Myeong-Su, 2009. "Multivariate Decomposition for Hazard Rate Models," IZA Discussion Papers 3971, IZA Network @ LISER.
    10. Woojin Chung & Monica Das Gupta, 2007. "The Decline of Son Preference in South Korea: The Roles of Development and Public Policy," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 33(4), pages 757-783, December.
    11. Albert López-Ibor, Rocío & Escot Mangas, Lorenzo & Fernández Cornejo, José Andrés, 2010. "La predisposición de las estudiantes universitarias a auto-limitarse profesionalmente en el futuro por razones de conciliación/The Predisposition of Feminine University Students to Professional Self-L," Estudios de Economia Aplicada, Estudios de Economia Aplicada, vol. 28, pages 203(32á)-20, Abril.
    12. Bönke Timm & Schröder Carsten, 2011. "Poverty in Germany – Statistical Inference and Decomposition," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 231(2), pages 178-209, April.
    13. Koumenta, Maria & Pagliero, Mario & Rostam-Afschar, Davud, 2020. "Occupational licensing and the gender wage gap," Hohenheim Discussion Papers in Business, Economics and Social Sciences 13-2020, University of Hohenheim, Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences.
    14. S. Madheswaran & Smrutirekha Singhari, 2016. "Social exclusion and caste discrimination in public and private sectors in India: A decomposition analysis," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 59(2), pages 175-201, June.
    15. Dueñas, Diego & Iglesias, Carlos & Llorente, Raquel, 2016. "¿Por qué las mujeres no se distribuyen de forma homogénea en el mercado de trabajo español? El “efecto rechazo” y el “efecto atracción”," El Trimestre Económico, Fondo de Cultura Económica, vol. 83(330), pages .339-369, abril-jun.
    16. Valentine Fays & Benoît Mahy & François Rycx & Mélanie Volral, 2021. "Wage discrimination based on the country of birth: do tenure and product market competition matter?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 53(13), pages 1551-1571, March.
    17. Melanie Jones & Ezgi Kaya, 2024. "Performance‐related pay and the UK gender pay gap," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 63(4), pages 512-529, October.
    18. Emanuela Ghignoni & Marilena Giannetti & Vincenzo Salvucci, 2022. "The double "discrimination" of foreign women: A matching comparisons approach," Working Papers in Public Economics 225, Department of Economics and Law, Sapienza University of Rome.
    19. repec:aru:wpaper:201403 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Mingming Li & Xinyun Hu & Keyan Jin, 2025. "The Return on Education and the Gender Wage Gap in China: A Sector Perspective," SAGE Open, , vol. 15(2), pages 21582440251, April.
    21. Robert Fairlie & Alicia Robb & David T. Robinson, 2022. "Black and White: Access to Capital Among Minority-Owned Start-ups," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(4), pages 2377-2400, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination

    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:pra:mprapa:19421. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    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.