Lower Caste Households Research Articles

Caste Differences in Child Growth: Disentangling Endowment and Investment Effects

Using the fourth round of the Indian National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4), and subsequently replicating our results using the fifth round (NFHS-5), we document differential child physical growth patterns across caste groups in India, demonstrating that lower caste children are born shorter and grow less quickly than children from higher-caste households. We then show that, in line with work from previous rounds of the NFHS, these differences are largely explainable by observable covariates, particularly maternal characteristics and household wealth variables. Our research also reveals a previously undocumented dynamic, that the influence of these variables changes as children develop, and suggests that caste-gaps are the result of multiple mechanisms impacting the child growth process at different stages of development. Using age-disaggregated decomposition methods, we demonstrate that health endowment related variables (e.g. maternal height) largely explain birth length gaps, and that variables related to health investments (e.g. household wealth, health care usage) become increasingly influential as children age. Children from lower caste households thus face two margins generating height gaps as they age: a persistent endowment disparity present from birth, and a post birth investment differential that exacerbates the initial deficit.

Socio-economic factors and clean cooking fuel consumption in India: A household level study

The present paper investigates the clean cooking fuel transition in India and the role of socio-economic factors, in determining the primary cooking fuel choices among Indian households during the last seven years. Our empirical finding suggests that there has been a sharp increase in clean cooking fuel consumption from 2015–16 to 2019–21 across the socio-economic groups, castes, religions and rural-urban areas. Our logit regression estimates based on NFHS fourth and fifth-round data on a sample of 664,543 and 685,337 households suggest that socioeconomic status is imperative in the clean cooking fuel consumption process. We further demonstrate that, as the household's size and age increase, they prefer less clean cooking fuels; however, households living in urban areas, especially female-headed, are more likely to use clean cooking fuels than their counterparts. Our finding also indicates that lower caste households are less likely to use clean cooking fuel than their upper caste counterparts, even though there has been a sharp improvement for the SC caste from 2015–16 to 2019–21. A comparatively contrasting result for religion suggests that Muslims and Christians are more likely to use clean cooking fuels than Hindus. Similarly, households with higher educational attainment, better wealth status, and female financial decision-makers with the availability of piped water sources are more likely to use clean cooking fuels. Further, to understand the effectiveness of PMUY policies on overall LPG use, a Difference In Difference (DID) technique has been applied, and the result indicates a positive impact of PMUY on the overall use of clean cooking fuel for the BPL households.

The impact of an improvement in the quality and reliability of rural residential electricity supply on clean cooking fuel adoption: Evidence from six energy poor Indian states

We present the first evidence of the causal effect of the quality and reliability of residential electricity supply on clean cooking fuel adoption and use in rural areas of six energy poor Indian states using household-level panel data from 2015 and 2018. Quality and reliability of electricity are measured using the number of hours of electricity supply in a day, the number of days of low voltage and the number of complete power outage days experienced in a month. We used the village-level variation in the coverage of a nationwide government program, (i.e., the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY)), that aimed to improve the quality and reliability of rural residential electricity supply, as an instrument. Our results show a positive effect of an improvement in the quality and reliability of electricity on liquefied petroleum gas adoption and use; and disadoption of traditional cooking fuel. The effects were significant for both poor and non-poor, and lower-caste households’ transition to clean cooking fuel. We find that the improvements in economic wellbeing, adoption of time-saving technologies, information access, and energy-efficient technology adoption played important mediating roles. These findings, for the first time, reveal the complementary role of electricity quality and reliability improvement with the adoption of clean energy sources, and thus supporting the achievement of important developmental outcomes. The findings thus underscore the need to invest in seamless and reliable electricity as a pathway to achieve the target of universal access to clean cooking fuels by 2030.

Women, technology, and water: creating new waterscapes and contesting cultural norms

Abstract With the analysis of primary data, the paper looks at how the adoption of new modes of water technologies and subsequent water commercialization has created new waterscapes. Water commercialization is changing cultural norms associated with water collection in the drought-prone villages of western Rajasthan. The newly introduced water tankers have selectively benefited the upper caste rich households who now buy water from the tankers at doorsteps. The majority of the poor and low caste households remain dependent on common water sources that are drying up due to neglect with the advent of water commercialization. Women from low caste poor households have to walk for long distances to fetch water in addition to doing physical labor to support family income. Though domestic water use remains a domain of woman's working space, men from high caste rich households have started fetching and storing water as it entails cash transactions.

Explaining Caste-Based Disparities in Enrollment for National Health Insurance Program in India: a Decomposition Analysis.

Caste plays a significant role in individual healthcare access and health outcomes in India. Discrimination against low-caste communities contributes to their poverty and poor health outcomes. The Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY), a national health insurance program, was created to improve healthcare access for the poor. This study accounts for caste-based disparities in RSBY enrollment in India by decomposing the contributions of relevant factors. Using the data from the 2015-2016 round of the National Family Health Survey, we compare RSBY enrollment rates of low-caste and high-caste households. We use a non-linear extension of Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition and estimate two models by pooling coefficients across the comparison groups and all caste groups. Enrollment differentials are decomposed into individual- and household-level characteristics, media access, and state-level fixed effects, allowing 2000 replications and random ordering of variables. The analysis of 480,766 households show that scheduled tribe households have the highest enrollment (18.85%), followed by 14.13% for scheduled caste, 10.67% for other backward caste, and 9.33% for high caste. Household factors, family head's characteristics, media access, and state-level fixed effects account for a 32% to 52% gap in enrollment. More specifically, the enrollment gaps are attributable to differences in wealth status,educational attainment, residence, family size, dependency ratio, media access, and occupational activities of the households. Weaker socio-economic status of low-caste households explains their high RSBY enrollments.

Can political parties improve minority wellbeing? Evidence from India’s “Silent Revolution”

We study the impact of caste-based ethnic parties on the redistribution of public resources to historically disadvantaged low caste and indigenous communities in India. Exploiting the outcome of narrowly contested state assembly elections as a source of exogenous variation, we show that a 10 percentage point increase in legislators from low caste parties increases low caste households’ consumption from India’s largest safety net program by 4%. Further suggesting the importance of parties’ varying interests in redistribution to disadvantaged populations, we find that low caste representatives from major mainstream political parties have little effect on safety net access compared to such representatives from low caste parties. An analysis of mechanisms suggests that legislators from parties focused on low caste interests improve the overall targeting of safety net programs. The results highlight the important role played by political parties in facilitating minority representation within multi-ethnic democracies.

Social hierarchies and the allocation of development aid: Evidence from the 2015 earthquake in Nepal

We study the role of discrimination and in-group biases in the allocation of public funds by community-based committees. Specifically, we investigate the effect of caste hierarchies on the amount of emergency aid given to households after the 2015 earthquake in Nepal. Local committees allocated aid immediately after the earthquake, and –officially– the amount of aid was a function of the magnitude of the housing damage. To identify discrimination and in-group favoritism in this context, we utilize rich data on house characteristics and housing damage and exploit exogenous variation in earthquake intensity. We first provide evidence for caste-based discrimination by these committees: Upper caste households received more aid than lower caste households. Second, we find in-group favoritism among upper caste households: Upper caste households received more aid if individuals from their own (upper) caste were involved in the allocation of aid. In contrast, lower caste households did not benefit from the presence of their own (lower) caste representatives in aid allocation committees. The results highlight the importance of social hierarchies in the study of favoritism and contribute to a better understanding of social structure for the implementation of development policy.

Local Social Inequality, Economic Inequality, and Disparities in Child Height in India.

This study investigates disparities in child height-an important marker of population-level health-among population groups in rural India. India is an informative context in which to study processes of health disparities because of wide heterogeneity in the degree of local segregation or integration among caste groups. Building on a literature that identifies discrimination by quantifying whether differences in socioeconomic status (SES) can account for differences in health, we decompose height differences between rural children from higher castes and rural children from three disadvantaged groups. We find that socioeconomic differences can explain the height gap for children from Scheduled Tribes (STs), who tend to live in geographically isolated places. However, SES does not fully explain height gaps for children from the Scheduled Castes (SC) and Other Backward Classes (OBCs). Among SC and OBC children, local processes of discrimination also matter: the fraction of households in a child's locality that outrank her household in the caste hierarchy predicts her height. SC and OBC children who are surrounded by other lower-caste households are no shorter than higher-caste children of the same SES. Our results contrast with studies from other populations where segregation or apartheid are negatively associated with health.

Ethnic Political Parties and the Socioeconomic Outcomes of Disadvantaged Minorities: Evidence from India's 'Silent Revolution'

Electoral quotas guaranteeing a threshold level of political representation for women and underprivileged socio-ethnic/religious minorities have been adopted in over 100 countries. This paper examines how the interaction of such quotas with political party structures affect minority welfare. We examine this question in the context of India, which has a long-standing system of electoral quotas for the representation of historically underprivileged low caste groups, and also witnessed through the 1980s the emergence of caste-based ethnic political parties with an explicit commitment to low caste welfare. Exploiting the outcome of close state legislative assembly elections between caste-based and mainstream parties as a source of exogenous variation, we show that the marginal legislator representing caste-based parties increases low caste households' monthly consumption of subsidized food grains from India's largest safety net program by 4%. Highlighting the importance of political parties' varying interests in redistribution, we show that legislators elected through the electoral quotas -- and thereby hailing from a low caste community by design -- affect redistribution to low-caste households only when they represent caste-based parties; in contrast, legislators elected through the electoral quotas but representing India's other major mainstream parties have virtually no effect on low-caste redistribution. Our results thus highlight an important and under-emphasized role played by the policy preferences of political parties for substantive political representation of socio-ethnic minorities.

Government-civil society co-management contracts for rural water services: lessons from India

The primary source of water for most residents of India’s nearly 640,000 villages is a handpump that extracts water from a shallow aquifer and is shared by several households. The handpumps require regular maintenance, given that mud, silt, salinity of groundwater, and usage degrade the moving parts over time. The challenge for state water authorities is to keep up with the operation and maintenance (O&M) of numerous handpumps. State water authorities have, therefore, shifted to contracting out the O&M activities to non-state actors including civil society organizations (CSOs) and private contractors. This study compares handpump O&M service outcomes of a co-management contract between the state water authority of Gujarat, India, and a community-based CSO with that of a standard contract between the state water authority and a private (non-CSO) contractor. We find the quality of handpump repair and maintenance in villages served by the CSO contractor to be better than that in villages served by the private contractor. Repair times for handpumps used by lower caste households are significantly lower in CSO-served villages suggesting that engaging CSOs can bring about equity in access to water. We also find that service quality significantly reduces the time spent collecting water thus increasing the overall welfare of rural households. We conclude that innovative contractual relationships such as co-management contracts between states and CSOs can prove to be an effective tool in providing, managing, and expanding public services, and enhancing the welfare of rural households.

Multiple stressors, food system vulnerability and food insecurity in Humla, Nepal

As the impacts of climate change (CC) have become apparent, Nepal has recently implemented a number of programs emphasizing climate sensitive resource management and development interventions. However, the attribution of vulnerability to CC alone may misdirect these programs because it is only one of multiple factors that affect rural livelihoods. Therefore, it is important to examine how CC interacts with historical socioeconomic, institutional and biophysical structures, as well as current policies and development to shape vulnerability. In this paper, we assessed the role of CC on food insecurity in the context of multiple interacting stressors in Humla district in west Nepal. Results suggested that the major features of climatic variabilities pertinent to food security included increasing dry spells, delayed monsoon and more frequent extreme events having direct negative impacts on agriculture. However, the most significant agricultural impacts were induced by socio-institutional changes. Environmental management through a community forestry program regulated livestock population, decreased manure supply to farms and significantly decreased soil productivity. This was synergized by a recent trend of school attendance among the young population which led to farm labor shortage and poor land management. Due to unequal land distribution, the low-caste households were more food insecure than households in higher tiers of the caste hierarchy. Their preexisting deprivation led to the adoption of modest or counterproductive coping strategies which would make them more vulnerable to future shocks. From these findings, we conclude that although CC is critical, it is not the only or the most significant factor of vulnerability. Its impacts are pre-configured by social relations, antecedent entitlement distributions and concurrent socio-institutional changes.

Adoption of milk safety measures and its impact on milk acceptance by buyers in Nepal

The production and consumption of safe and hygienic milk is a major concern in a developing country like Nepal. Adoption of food safety measures at farm level can play a critical role in ensuring quality and safety of the milk. This study has examined the factors influencing the acceptance/rejection rates for milk samples using a linear probabilistic and binary probit regression models. The study is based on milk safety survey data gathered from milk producers in six milk-producing districts of Nepal. The study has found that the dairy farmers adopting higher food safety measures have an increased probability of acceptance rate of their milk samples. Dairy farmers associated with a cooperative society, have depicted a higher probability of milk acceptance by 17 per cent. A higher milk sample acceptance rate has been found among the marginal and lower caste households in Nepal.

Determinants of participation in Community Forestry in Nepal

SUMMARY Determinants of people's participation in community forestry activities in Tanahun district, Nepal were investigated through a survey of 304 households across ten community forest user groups, key informant interviews, and informal group discussions. Data were analysed through an ordered probit model as well as through the marginal effects of socio-economic factors on the probability of households' participation. Of the 12 variables considered in this study, only gender, caste, household size, livestock holding, network, and amount of firewood extraction proved statistically significant. In all household wealth categories, a moderate level of participation was by far the most common. Further, the results indicate that users participating more in community forestry activities have extracted higher amounts of firewood, fodder and timber although this relation was not statistically significant. Female headed and low caste households, however, participated significantly less than other household categ...

Long-run impacts of land regulation: Evidence from tenancy reform in India

Agricultural tenancy reforms have been widely enacted, but evidence on their long-run impact remains limited. In this paper, we provide such evidence by exploiting the quasi-random assignment of linguistically similar areas to different South Indian states that subsequently varied in tenancy regulation policies. Given imperfect credit markets, the impact of tenancy reform should vary by household wealth status, allowing us to exploit historic caste-based variation in landownership. Thirty years after the reforms, land inequality is lower in areas that saw greater intensity of tenancy reform, but the impact differs across caste groups. Tenancy reforms increase own cultivation among middle-caste households, but render low-caste households more likely to work as daily agricultural laborers. At the same time, agricultural wages increase. These results are consistent with tenancy regulations increasing land sales to relatively richer and more productive middle-caste tenants, but reducing land access for poorer low-caste tenants.

The revolution from the kitchen: Social processes of the removal of traditional cookstoves in Himachal Pradesh, India

Despite decades of effort, widespread adoption and long-term use of improved cookstoves in developing countries remain hard to achieve. Conventional energy transition models emphasize households' socio-economic improvement as the most important driver of energy transition. However, previous work has shown households' continued use of old cookstoves or fuels even when adopting new technologies. Through a case study in India, this paper highlights the socio-political processes of the permanent removal of the traditional chulha cookstove. Newly available liquefied petroleum gas stoves and improved biomass stoves, thought to be substitutes for chulha, lead to different adoption pathways for lower and higher caste households. Lower caste households seem to remove chulha more readily because of sensitivity to chulha's heavy smoke that pollutes their utensils, kitchen, and clothes. We posit that by adopting cleaner stoves and removing traditional ones, the marginalized can disassociate themselves from practices that perpetuate their social stigma.

Crossing boundaries: How social hierarchy impedes economic mobility

How important are social hierarchies in explaining durable economic inequality? Using novel data from rural Pakistan on the caste composition of village hamlets and the location of primary schools, we investigate the impact of caste-based hierarchies on human capital accumulation, a key determinant of socio-economic mobility. We find that social stigma greatly discourages school enrollment among low-caste children, with low-caste girls, the most educationally disadvantaged group, being the worst affected. Our results imply that a policy of prioritizing school availability in settlements dominated by low-caste households would be a cost-effective way of increasing overall school enrollment.

PRELIMINARY EVIDENCE ON INTERNAL MIGRATION, REMITTANCES, AND TEEN SCHOOLING IN INDIA

We examine correlations between the receipt of remittances from internal migrants and human capital investment in rural areas of India. We employ a propensity score matching approach to account for the selectivity of households into receiving remittances. We find a positive correlation between remittances received from internal migrants and the schooling attendance of teens. The magnitude of the correlation is greater when focusing on low-caste households, and male schooling attendance in particular becomes more positive and statistically significant. Our findings provide a basis for establishing future research in the areas of migration and social protection in India. (JEL O15, J24, R23)

Caste as an Impediment to Trade

We compare outcomes across two types of villages in rural India. Villages vary by which caste is dominant (owns the majority of land): either a low or high caste. The key finding is that income is substantially higher for low-caste households residing in villages dominated by a low caste. This seems to be due to a trade breakdown in irrigation water across caste groups. All else equal, lower caste water buyers have agricultural yields which are 45 percent higher if they reside in a village where water sellers are of the same caste compared to one where they are not. (JEL O12, O13, O17, O18, Q15, R23, Z13)

Is the NREGS a Safety Net for Children? Studying the Access to the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme for Young Lives Families, and its Impact on Child Outcomes in Andhra Pradesh

The NREGS is an ambitious public works program intended to provide a basic safety net to the rural poor in India. Institutionalised in 2005, it is currently the largest public works program in the world. Despite its scale and the political importance attached to the program, its success in targeting and its impact on participating households has not been well studied. This paper attempts to study two aspects of the program’s functioning using data from the Young Lives longitudinal Study conducted in Andhra Pradesh. Firstly it looks at the targeting of the program and the characteristics of those who self select into it. We find that poorer and lower caste households are more likely to register as are those affected by drought. We also find that having more than 5 influential relatives increases the probability of registration by 10.3 percentage points. We next attempt to estimate the impact of program participation on the children in participating households, looking specifically at anthropometric scores as indicators of health outcomes, and the incidence of child labour. While there seems to be a positive correlation between program participation and health outcomes, this does not remain robust across specifications. On the other hand we find that program registration reduces the probability of a boy entering child labour by 13.4% points and program take up reduces it for girls by 8.19% points. We find that the targeting efficiency of the program seems to be largely effective and it seems to offer a viable security net for households with variable employment opportunities. It also seems to have an important effect on children, further strengthening the program’s significance.

Social affiliation and the demand for health services: Caste and child health in South India

This paper assesses the role of social affiliation, measured by caste, in shaping investments in child health. The special setting that we have chosen for the analysis – tea estates in the South Indian High Range – allows us to control nonparametrically for differences in income, access to health services, and patterns of morbidity across low caste and high caste households. In this controlled setting, low caste households spend more on their children's health than high caste households, reversing the pattern we would expect to find elsewhere in India. Moreover, health expenditures do not vary by gender within either caste group, in contrast once again with the male preference documented throughout the country. A simple explanation, based on differences in the returns to human capital across castes in the tea estates, is proposed to explain these striking results.