Welfare implications of segregation of social and religious groups in India: analyzing from wealth perspectives

Purpose - This paper analyzes the welfare implications of the unequal distribution of wealth amongst the social and religious groups by studying the segregation of these groups across different occupations. Design/methodology/approach - The authors use measures suggested by Alonso-Villar and Río (2017) and del Río and Alonso-Villar (2018) to compute the well-being of social groups (based on caste system prevalent in the Indian subcontinent) and religious groups due to their segregation across different regions (urban and rural) and occupations and social welfare loss of the society due to the segregation. Here social groups comprise of ST: Scheduled Tribe, SC: Scheduled Caste, OBC: Other Backward Caste and Others: other remaining castes; while, religious groups comprise of followers of Hinduism, Islam, Christianity and other religious groups. Findings - The result shows that SC and ST groups are worse; while, the “others” group is better off due to the segregation of social groups across both regions and occupation. Similarly, in the case of religious groups, the analysis reveals that followers of Christianity are better off due to the segregation across region and occupation. It further shows that followers of Hinduism are negatively impacted while followers of Islam and other religious groups were better off due to the segregation across the regions. Originality/value - Various researchers have studied the wealth inequality and unequal distribution in India over the years but did not dive further into the welfare implications of segregation of social and religious groups from wealth perspectives in India.