Term paper

1. Intergenerational Persistence across Castes in
India
1 Introduction
Despite economic liberalisation, the Indian economy continues to be burdened with intergen-
erational persistence. In this essay, we take a look at the relevant literature to understand
the effect of economic change in India on social mobility across castes, whether affirmative ac-
tion has worked for the Schedules Castes and Scheduled tribes and how social scientists tackle
the problem of only having tools for cross-sectional analysis, at their disposal, to answer such
pertinent questions.
2 Literature Review
Indian research regarding social mobility suffers from a lack of longitudinal data over a consid-
erable duration. Work on educational mobility by Jalan and Murgai (2008) found significant
improvements across generations. However, Motiram and Singh (2012) found considerable in-
tergenerational persistence in lack of opportunity. Krishna (2013) investigated social mobility
by looking at three occupational silos and found that even though persistence has declined in
SC/STs compared to historical trends, substantial evidence of inequality between the Higher
Hindu and disadvantaged castes still exists. Hnatkovskay et al. (2012) used five rounds of NSS
data to find that there was improved convergence of SC-STs to non-SC/STs, in education,
occupation, and wages and consumption, between 1983 and 2005, signalling that the intergen-
erational mobility rates of SC/STs were much sharper than those of the non-SC/STs during
this period. Iversen et al. (2017) discovered striking differences in upward mobility between
rural and urban, higher and lower castes, with high downward mobility risks for the disad-
vantaged per location and castes. Asher et al. (2021) concluded that mobility has remained
stagnant since pre-liberalisation because the substantial decline among Muslims offset the high
upward mobility rates in SC/STs.
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2. 3 Differing measures for social mobility
Hnatkovskay et al. (2012) used five rounds of National Sample Survey(NSS) data from 1983-
2005 to comment on caste mobility across education, education, occupation, and consumption.
They grouped all household heads into “parents” and all children/grandchildren into a group,
“children”. They proceeded to select individuals in the age group of 16-65, provided they
belong to a male-headed household, co-residing with at least one adult “child”, excluding
school-going “children”.
Azam and Bhatt (2015) used one round of India Human Development Survey (IHDS), 2004-
05 data, relaxing the restriction of co-residing households. They have only included father-son
pairs and measure economic status by the level of educational attainment. They have classified
adult males into year-of-birth cohorts and examined intergenerational mobility across such age
cohorts, deriving conclusions by castes and across states.
Asher et al. (2021) used IHDS, 2011-12 data to examine educational mobility using a new
measure named bottom-half mobility- expected rank of a child born to a parent belonging
to the bottom half of the educational distribution. They have claimed that this measure has
tighter bounds for error, accounting for the uncertainty in interval estimates, than previous
measures (absolute mobility and rank-rank gradient) and can also be used to gain meaningful
conclusions across time, space, countries and population sub-groups.
Krishna (2013) examined three distinct fields- Business colleges, engineering colleges, and
civil services, for the percentage of students classified across rural origin, relative wealth,
parents’ occupation and education, gender, religion, and caste. Iversen et al. (2017) classified
occupation into six categories and studied father-son occupational persistence in rural, urban
and across subcastes from both rounds of IHDS data.
4 Differences in results
Hnatkovskay et al. found significant convergence in occupation and wages of SC/STs to non-
SC/STs. As the study discovered, a significant reason for this is the convergence of educational
attainment between the higher and the lower castes. However, this convergence was not uni-
form in education, occupation or wages- as the convergence was striking in lower educational
categories and blue-collar jobs, but there was a divergence in higher education and white-collar
jobs. This shows that relatively better off SC/STs did not benefit more than poorer SC/STs.
Possible reasons for such results could be liberalisation induced rising competition, declining
wage gaps, rising returns to education, more robust community networks and affirmative action
for the SC/STs.
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3. Azam and Bhatt found contrasting results from the two different measures employed- while
the regression coefficient saw a steady decline across castes and different indicators of economic
status like education, employment and others; the correlation coefficient showed no trend. This,
as found, was because the decline in correlation at the lower end of the father’s education dis-
tribution was offset by a rise in the upper end. They also found a significant gap in secondary
education attainment of sons based on father’s education- signifying policies were not suc-
cessful in inducing mobility of sons of less-educated fathers to the highest levels of education.
Unlike Hnatkovskay et al., Azam and Bhatt found a significant caste gap- no convergence in
probabilities of sons achieving a secondary education conditional on their fathers’ education,
between HHCs and the SC/STs.
Although Asher et al. found similar results to Hnatkovskay et al. The SC/STs had reduced
the gap in mobility significantly, the former study found that social mobility had remained the
same. This is mainly because of a substantial decline in the mobility of Muslims. However, they
concluded that differential returns to education, residential locations, occupation or fertility,
cannot account for such decline and difference in mobility from the Scheduled Castes. They
also found differing mobility trends across districts, with high mobility in urban and poor or
decline in rural areas.
Iversen et al. (2017) found significant differences between the HHCs and SC/STs- high
upward mobility prospects for the former and significant risk of downward mobility for the
latter.
5 Future Research
There remains significant scope for further work in the area. The causal effects of the pitiable
state of Muslim mobility remain unknown. However, the success of affirmative action for
SC/STs, as noted by most of the work, calls for strong support of affirmative action for
Muslims. Although neighbourhood effects and parental investment spillover to peers, in the
context of social mobility, has seen a fair amount of literature in the western countries, this
is an exciting area that is yet to be explored much in India. Also, a concerning aspect is the
increasing risk of downward mobility for SC/STs and the upper end of the HHCs, which will
do well with further examination in tackling this problem.
6 Conclusion
The major handicap to pertinent work in the area is the unavailability of longitudinal data,
which is essential for time-series analysis to discover the true scope of intergenerational mobility.
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4. The endeavour of deriving trustable conclusions through cross-sectional analysis has led to the
development of unique and contrasting, sometimes confusing measures, leading to heterogeneity
in the results across studies. Although literature in the Indian context is relatively recent, it
is pretty considerable already. Further scope of work in the field is endless, making the social
mobility context fascinating and vital.
7 References
Asher, S., Novosad, P., Rafkin, C. (2021) Intergenerational Mobility in India: New Methods
and Estimates Across Time, Space, and Communities.
Azam, M., Bhatt, V. (2015) Like Father, Like Son? Intergenerational Educational Mobility
in India. Population Association of America
Hnatkovskay, V., Lahiri, A., Paul, S. B. (2012).Castes and Labour Mobility. American
Economic Journal: Applied Economics
Iversen, V., Krishna, A., Sen, K. (2017) Economic and Political Weekly
Jalan, J., Murgai, Rinku. (2008). Intergenerational Mobility in Education in India
Krishna, A.(2012) Making it in India:Examining Social mobility in three walks of life.
Economic and Political Weekly
Motiram, S., Singh, A. (2012) How Close Does the Apple Fall to the Tree? Some Evidence
from India on Intergenerational Occupational Mobility. Economic and Political Weekly
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