Abstract
The paper attempts to explore the role of family background in contributing to the overall economic inequality in Indian society. Drawing on the recent work on equality of opportunity, and using the Indian Human Development Survey (IHDS, 2004–05), paper finds that the opportunity share of inequality in wage earnings in India ranges from 11% to 17% across different age based cohorts. Given the conservative view of what constitutes responsibility, the analysis is likely to identify only the lower bound of opportunity inequality. The paper also calls for redistributive policies favoring those who suffer from inferior circumstances.
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Notes
See Ferreira and Gignoux (2008) which have used both the mean log deviation as well as Theil’s index.
As the previous studies on the subject suggest, it would have been desirable to consider the education of both the parents for analysis, but the lack of information on mother’s education in the data leaves with no choice but to use father’s education as the only instrument to capture parental education.
The paper finds very high degree of correlation between parental education and individual’s education for all the cohorts. The results can be provided on request.
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The author would like to thank the editor and the anonymous referee for the review process and the comments. The author would also like to thank Dr. Sripad Motiram for helpful comments.
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Singh, A. The Effect of Family Background on Individual Wages and an Examination of Inequality of Opportunity in India. J Labor Res 31, 230–246 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12122-010-9090-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12122-010-9090-5