IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ags/ragrar/335237.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Wealth Inequality: Evidence from Two Villages in Bihar

Author

Listed:
  • Swaminathan, Madhura
  • Nagbhushan, Shruti

Abstract

This paper examines inequality in ownership of wealth in two villages of North Bihar, drawing on data from the PARI surveys conducted in 2012. The analysis showed extreme levels of inequality, among the highest of the 23 villages surveyed by PARI. Inequality in wealth across socio-economic classes was extremely high, with the top one per cent of households comprising landlords and capitalist farmers owning the bulk of all assets of resident households and the class of manual workers owning a minuscule share of total assets. The present study provides concrete evidence of the vast gap between the wealth of a manual worker and a landlord. Land remained the most important component of household wealth, including among the very rich. Given the strong correlation between caste and class, we found, predictably, that Scheduled Castes were the group worst off in terms of asset ownership, with members of the Extremely Backward Classes close behind. There was heterogeneity among Backward Class (BC) households.

Suggested Citation

  • Swaminathan, Madhura & Nagbhushan, Shruti, 2022. "Wealth Inequality: Evidence from Two Villages in Bihar," Review of Agrarian Studies, Foundation for Agrarian Studies, vol. 12(1), June.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:ragrar:335237
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/335237/files/Wealth_Inequality.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kumar, Deepak, 2016. "Discrepancies in Data on Landholdings in Rural India: Aggregate and Distributional Implications," Review of Agrarian Studies, Foundation for Agrarian Studies, vol. 6(1), July.
    2. Sreenivasan Subramanian & D. Jayaraj, 2006. "The Distribution of Household Wealth in India," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2006-116, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    3. Chavan, Pallavi, 2012. "Debt of Rural Households in India: A Note on the All-India Debt and Investment Survey," Review of Agrarian Studies, Foundation for Agrarian Studies, vol. 2(1), July.
    4. Amrita Datta & Gerry Rodgers & Janine Rodgers & Bkn Singh, 2014. "Contrasts in Development in Bihar: A Tale of Two Villages," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(9), pages 1197-1208, September.
    5. Kumar, Awanish, 2022. "Land and Caste Relations in North Bihar: Observations from Two Villages," Review of Agrarian Studies, Foundation for Agrarian Studies, vol. 12(1), June.
    6. Dhar, Niladri Sekhar & Pandey, Mrityunjay & Kumar, Awanish, 2022. "Identifying Socio-Economic Classes in Two Villages of Bihar," Review of Agrarian Studies, Foundation for Agrarian Studies, vol. 12(1), June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kumar, Awanish, 2022. "Land and Caste Relations in North Bihar: Observations from Two Villages," Review of Agrarian Studies, Foundation for Agrarian Studies, vol. 12(1), June.

    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. Sarkar, Biplab, 2017. "The Situation Assessment Surveys: An Evaluation," Review of Agrarian Studies, Foundation for Agrarian Studies, vol. 7(2), December.
    2. Bhattacharya, Soham, 2019. "Agricultural Tenancy in Contemporary Punjab: A Study Based on National Sample Survey Data," Review of Agrarian Studies, Foundation for Agrarian Studies, vol. 9(2), December.
    3. Amrita Datta, 2020. "Circular Migration and Precarity: Perspectives from Rural Bihar," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 63(4), pages 1143-1163, December.
    4. Zacharias, Ajit & Vakulabharanam, Vamsi, 2011. "Caste Stratification and Wealth Inequality in India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 39(10), pages 1820-1833.
    5. Thiagu Ranganathan & Ghanshyam Pandey, 2018. "Who Leaves Farmland Fallow and Why? An Empirical Investigation Using Nationally Representative Survey Data from India," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 30(5), pages 914-933, December.
    6. K. J. Joseph & Liyan Zhang & Kiran Kumar Kakarlapudi, 2018. "The Dragon Turns around and the Elephant Moves Forward: Inequality in China and India under Globalization," Millennial Asia, , vol. 9(3), pages 235-261, December.
    7. Amy Y. C. Liu, 2009. "Inequality among the rural poor: A tale of two cities in India and Vietnam," International and Development Economics Working Papers idec09-04, International and Development Economics.
    8. Rishabh Kumar, 2019. "The evolution of wealth-income ratios in India, 1860-2012," World Inequality Lab Working Papers hal-02876998, HAL.
    9. Anoop S. Kumar & P. Yazir & G. G. Gopika, 2019. "Consumption Inequality In India After Liberalization: A Caste Based Assessment," The Singapore Economic Review (SER), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 64(01), pages 139-155, March.
    10. Reena Kumari, 2016. "Regional disparity in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar: a disaggregated level analysis," Journal of Social and Economic Development, Springer;Institute for Social and Economic Change, vol. 18(1), pages 121-146, October.
    11. Sharma, Ajay & Chandrasekhar, S., 2016. "Impact of commuting by workers on household dietary diversity in rural India," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 34-43.
    12. D. Jayaraj & S. Subramanian, 2018. "The Distribution of Household Assets in India: 1991–1992 to 2012–2013," Indian Journal of Human Development, , vol. 12(2), pages 181-203, August.
    13. Vasavi Bhatt & S. Chandrasekhar & Ajay Sharma, 2020. "Regional Patterns and Determinants of Commuting Between Rural and Urban India," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 63(4), pages 1041-1063, December.
    14. Aswini Kumar Mishra & Vedant Bhardwaj, 2021. "Wealth distribution and accounting for changes in wealth inequality: empirical evidence from India, 1991–2012," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 54(2), pages 585-620, May.
    15. Patrick Honohan, 2006. "Household Financial Assets in the Process of Development," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2006-91, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    16. Wiggins, S., 2016. "IFAD RESEARCH SERIES 1 - Agricultural and rural development reconsidered: a guide to issues and debates," IFAD Research Series 280035, International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
    17. Choithani, Chetan & van Duijne, Robbin Jan & Nijman, Jan, 2021. "Changing livelihoods at India’s rural–urban transition," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    18. Saurabh & R. V. Ramanamurthy, 2023. "Employment status and wealth inequality between scheduled caste and other caste households in India," Journal of Social and Economic Development, Springer;Institute for Social and Economic Change, vol. 25(1), pages 1-16, June.
    19. Naresh Kumar & Ritu Rani, 2019. "Regional Disparities in Social Development: Evidence from States and Union Territories of India," South Asian Survey, , vol. 26(1), pages 1-27, March.
    20. Harriss, John, 2022. "The PARI Studies in Bihar: An Introduction," Review of Agrarian Studies, Foundation for Agrarian Studies, vol. 12(1), June.

    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:ags:ragrar:335237. 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: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/faskoin.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.