IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/inddev/v12y2018i2p134-148.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Inequality in the Indian Growth Regime

Author

Listed:
  • Gerry Rodgers

Abstract

Researchers and policymakers have traditionally been more concerned with poverty than with inequality in India but this is now changing. The long-term trend in India was for economic inequality to decline until the 1980s, but it has since been rising, especially in urban areas, and between urban and rural areas. Wages have been rising and absolute poverty has been falling, but there has been a tendency for the gains from growth to be concentrated among the highest income groups. This applies not only to income and expenditure but also to wealth. These trends reflect the social and economic institutions that underpin the changing growth regime in India—the macroeconomic framework; wage labour relations; agrarian relations; the competition regime; type of integration in the international economy; and the role of the state. These institutions and their interactions give rise to particular patterns of growth and distribution, which change over time, and which need to be analysed in historical context. The article briefly reviews the impact of these factors on inequality over the period since Independence, and suggests that the forces driving the upward path of inequality remain strong.

Suggested Citation

  • Gerry Rodgers, 2018. "Inequality in the Indian Growth Regime," Indian Journal of Human Development, , vol. 12(2), pages 134-148, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:inddev:v:12:y:2018:i:2:p:134-148
    DOI: 10.1177/0973703018793956
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0973703018793956
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0973703018793956?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lucas Chancel & Thomas Piketty, 2019. "Indian Income Inequality, 1922‐2015: From British Raj to Billionaire Raj?," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 65(S1), pages 33-62, November.
    2. repec:cup:cbooks:9781108416191 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Piketty, Thomas & Chancel, Lucas, 2017. "Indian income inequality, 1922-2014: From British Raj to Billionaire Raj ?," CEPR Discussion Papers 12409, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Gerry Rodgers, 2016. "Inequality and the labour market: comparing India and Brazil," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 59(1), pages 39-55, March.
    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. Jiao, Zhilun & Sharma, Rajesh & Kautish, Pradeep & Hussain, Hafezali Iqbal, 2021. "Unveiling the asymmetric impact of exports, oil prices, technological innovations, and income inequality on carbon emissions in India," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    2. Yang, Junhua & Li, Ying & Sui, Anna, 2023. "From black gold to green: Analyzing the consequences of oil price volatility on oil industry finances and carbon footprint," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).

    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. Peter Lanjouw & Hai-Anh Dang, 2018. "Welfare dynamics in India over a quarter-century: Poverty, vulnerability, and mobility, 1987–2012," WIDER Working Paper Series 175, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    2. 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.
    3. Gaurav Datt & Martin Ravallion & Rinku Murgai, 2020. "Poverty and Growth in India over Six Decades," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 102(1), pages 4-27, January.
    4. Mazumdar, Surajit, 2020. "The Coronavirus and India’s Economic Crisis: Continuity and Change," MPRA Paper 104969, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 20 Dec 2020.
    5. Thomas Blanchet & Ignacio Flores & Marc Morgan, 2022. "The weight of the rich: improving surveys using tax data," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 20(1), pages 119-150, March.
    6. Rao, R. Kavita, 2022. "Income Tax data and Facets of transparency," Working Papers 22/384, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy.
    7. Edwin Fourrier-Nicolai & Michel Lubrano, 2019. "The Effect of Aspirations on Inequality: Evidence from the German Reunification using Bayesian Growth Incidence Curves," Working Papers halshs-02122371, HAL.
    8. Himanshu, 2019. "Inequality in India: A review of levels and trends," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2019-42, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    9. Thomas Piketty & Li Yang, 2022. "Income and Wealth Inequality in Hong Kong, 1981–2020: The Rise of Pluto-Communism? [Top Wealth Shares in the UK over More than a Century]," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 36(4), pages 803-834.
    10. Lucas Chancel & Denis Cogneau & Amory Gethin & Alix Myczkowski, 2019. "How large are African inequalities? Towards Distributional National Accounts in Africa, 1990 - 2017," Working Papers hal-02876986, HAL.
    11. Pawel Bukowski & Filip Novokmet, 2018. "Inequality in Poland: Estimating the whole distribution by g-percentile 1983-2015," LIS Working papers 731, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    12. Subaran Roy & Chitrakalpa Sen & Rohini Sanyal, 2019. "An Empirical Inquiry into Per Capita Convergence of Indian States," Global Journal of Emerging Market Economies, Emerging Markets Forum, vol. 11(3), pages 232-247, September.
    13. Devi Vijay, 2019. "Introduction to the special issue: changing nature of work and organizations in India," DECISION: Official Journal of the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, Springer;Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, vol. 46(2), pages 93-97, June.
    14. Mukesh Kumar Anand & Rahul Chakraborty, 2019. "Public Expenditure on Old-Age Income Support in India: Largesse for a Few, Illusory for Most," Working Papers id:13035, eSocialSciences.
    15. Lydia Assouad & Lucas Chancel & Marc Morgan, 2018. "Extreme Inequality: Evidence from Brazil, India, the Middle East, and South Africa," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 108, pages 119-123, May.
    16. V. K. Shrotryia & Shashank Vikram Pratap Singh, 2020. "Measuring Progress Beyond GDP: A Theoretical Perspective," Emerging Economy Studies, International Management Institute, vol. 6(2), pages 143-165, November.
    17. Facundo Alvaredo & Lydia Assouad & Thomas Piketty, 2019. "Measuring lnequality in the Middle East 1990–2016: The World’s Most Unequal Region?," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 65(4), pages 685-711, December.
    18. Gerton Rongen, 2018. "A new inequality estimate for urban India?: Using house prices to estimate inequality in Mumbai," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2018-181, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    19. Lucas Chancel & Denis Cogneau & Amory Gethin & Alix Myczkowski, 2019. "How large are African inequalities? Towards Distributional National Accounts in Africa, 1990 - 2017," World Inequality Lab Working Papers hal-02876986, HAL.
    20. Deb Kusum Das & Abdul Azeez Erumban & Jagannath Mallick, 2021. "Economic Growth In India During 1950–2015: Nehruvian Socialism To Market Capitalism," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(3), pages 926-951, July.

    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:sae:inddev:v:12:y:2018:i:2:p:134-148. 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.