IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ind/igiwpp/2014-026.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Unemployment Burden and its Distribution: Theory and Evidence from India

Author

Listed:
  • Sripad Motiram

    (Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research)

  • Karthikeya Naraparaju

    (Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research)

Abstract

We develop a measure of unemployment that takes into account both the level and intensity of unemployment and that satisfies several desirable properties, including distribution sensitivity (dealing with differences among the unemployed). It can also be decomposed into mean and distributional components and contributions to unemployment by various subgroups of the population. We then apply this measure to understand unemployment in India using data from National Sample Surveys on employment and unemployment during the period 1993-2012. We show that unemployment has generally fallen in this period, but this finding has to be seen in light of considerable underemployment. Moreover, unemployment is driven to a greater extent by higher educated groups; the unemployment among these groups is also fairly substantial. The distribution of unemployment has also worsened. We explain these findings and suggest some policies.

Suggested Citation

  • Sripad Motiram & Karthikeya Naraparaju, 2014. "Unemployment Burden and its Distribution: Theory and Evidence from India," Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai Working Papers 2014-026, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, India.
    • Handle: RePEc:ind:igiwpp:2014-026
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.igidr.ac.in/pdf/publication/WP-2014-026.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. The World Bank,, 2010. "India's Employment Challenge: Creating Jobs, Helping Workers," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198063513.
    2. Paul, Satya, 1991. "On the measurement of unemployment," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 395-404, October.
    3. Kim B. Clark & Lawrence H. Summers, 1979. "Labor Market Dynamics and Unemployemnt: A Reconsideration," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 10(1), pages 13-72.
    4. Stögbauer, Christian & Komlos, John, 2004. "Averting the Nazi seizure of power: A counterfactual thought experiment," European Review of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 8(2), pages 173-199, August.
    5. Ashok Kotwal & Bharat Ramaswami & Wilima Wadhwa, 2011. "Economic Liberalization and Indian Economic Growth: What's the Evidence?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(4), pages 1152-1199, December.
    6. Stoegbauer, Christian & Komlos, John, 2004. "Averting the Nazi Seizure of Power," Discussion Papers in Economics 305, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    7. Akerlof, George A & Main, Brian G M, 1981. "An Experience-Weighted Measure of Employment and Unemployment Durations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(5), pages 1003-1011, December.
    8. Peter Lambert, 2009. "Mini-symposium: The 1990, 1992 and 1993 papers on distributionally sensitive measures of unemployment by Manimay Sengupta and Anthony Shorrocks," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 7(3), pages 269-271, September.
    9. Vani K. Borooah, 2002. "A Duration‐sensitive Measure of the Unemployment Rate: Theory and Application," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 16(3), pages 453-468, September.
    10. Shorrocks, Anthony F, 1993. "On the measurement of unemployment," Economics Discussion Papers 10017, University of Essex, Department of Economics.
    11. Saul, S., 1992. "An Illfare Approach to the Measurement of Unemployment," Papers e9204, Western Sydney - School of Business And Technology.
    12. Luc Christiaensen & Anthony Shorrocks, 2012. "Measuring poverty over time," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 10(2), pages 137-143, June.
    13. Basu, K & Nolen, PJ, 2006. "Vulnerability, Unemployment and Poverty: A Class of Distribution and Sensitive Measures, Its Axiomatic Properties and Applications," Economics Discussion Papers 2911, University of Essex, Department of Economics.
    14. Anthony Shorrocks & Guanghua Wan, 2005. "Spatial decomposition of inequality," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 5(1), pages 59-81, January.
    15. Sen, Amartya K, 1976. "Poverty: An Ordinal Approach to Measurement," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 44(2), pages 219-231, March.
    16. Basu, Kaushik & Maertens, Annemie (ed.), 2012. "The New Oxford Companion to Economics in India," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, edition 3, number 9780198078555.
    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. Indian Institute for Human Settlements, 2017. "Cities as Engines of Inclusive Development," Working Papers id:11713, eSocialSciences.
    2. Shalina Susan MATHEW, 2024. "Working, yet not working: Assessing labour underutilization in India," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 163(1), pages 141-162, March.

    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. Sripad Motiram & Karthikeya Naraparaju, 2014. "Unemployment burden and its distribution: Theory and evidence from India," Working Papers 341, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    2. Sripad Motiram & Karthikeya Naraparaju, 2014. "Unemployment Burden and its Distribution: Theory and Evidence from India," Working Papers id:6066, eSocialSciences.
    3. Carlos Gradín & Olga Cantó & Coral Río, 2017. "Measuring employment deprivation in the EU using a household-level index," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 15(2), pages 639-667, June.
    4. Stephen Bazen & Xavier Joutard & Mouhamadou Niang, 2014. "The measurement of unemployment using completed durations: evidence on the gender gap in unemployment in France," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 12(4), pages 517-534, December.
    5. Stephen Bazen & Xavier Joutard & Mouhamadou M. Niang, 2012. "The Duration-Based Measurement of Unemployment: Estimation Issues and an Application to Male-Female Unemployment Differences in France," Working Papers halshs-00793056, HAL.
    6. Carlos Gradín & Coral Del Río & Olga Cantó, 2012. "Measuring Poverty Accounting For Time," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 58(2), pages 330-354, June.
    7. Carlos Gradin & Olga Canto & Coral del Rio, 2012. "Measuring employment deprivation among households in the EU," Working Papers 247, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    8. Peter Lambert, 2009. "Mini-symposium: The 1990, 1992 and 1993 papers on distributionally sensitive measures of unemployment by Manimay Sengupta and Anthony Shorrocks," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 7(3), pages 269-271, September.
    9. Joseph Deutsch & Yves Flückiger & Jacques Silber, 2008. "On various ways of measuring unemployment, with applications to Switzerland," Research on Economic Inequality, in: Inequality and Opportunity: Papers from the Second ECINEQ Society Meeting, pages 259-284, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    10. Martin Riese, 1999. "An illfare approach to the measurement of unemployment: comment on Paul (1992)," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 6(5), pages 279-281.
    11. Ingrid Kubin & Michael Steiner, 1987. "Dauer der Arbeitslosigkeit - ein regional differenziertes Problem," Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft - WuG, Kammer für Arbeiter und Angestellte für Wien, Abteilung Wirtschaftswissenschaft und Statistik, vol. 13(1), pages 55-70.
    12. Bosch, Mariano & Maloney, William F., 2010. "Comparative analysis of labor market dynamics using Markov processes: An application to informality," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 621-631, August.
    13. Markus Jäntti & Ravi Kanbur & Milla Nyyssölä & Jukka Pirttilä, 2014. "Poverty and Welfare Measurement on the Basis of Prospect Theory," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 60(1), pages 182-205, March.
    14. Anthony Shorrocks, 2009. "On the measurement of unemployment," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 7(3), pages 311-327, September.
    15. Coral del Río & Javier Ruiz-Castillo, 2001. "TIPs for poverty analysis. The case of Spain, 1980-81 to 1990-91," Investigaciones Economicas, Fundación SEPI, vol. 25(1), pages 63-91, January.
    16. Ingrid Kubin & Michael Steiner, 1991. "Labor Market Performance and Regional Types: A Conceptual Framework with Empirical Analysis of Austria," International Regional Science Review, , vol. 14(3), pages 275-298, December.
    17. Galofré-Vilà, Gregori & Meissner, Christopher M. & McKee, Martin & Stuckler, David, 2021. "Austerity and the Rise of the Nazi Party," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 81(1), pages 81-113, March.
    18. Ingrid Kubin & Michael Steiner, 1987. "Dauer der Arbeitslosigkeit - ein regional differenziertes Problem?," Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft - WuG, Kammer für Arbeiter und Angestellte für Wien, Abteilung Wirtschaftswissenschaft und Statistik, vol. 13(1), pages 55-70.
    19. Basu, K & Nolen, PJ, 2006. "Vulnerability, Unemployment and Poverty: A Class of Distribution and Sensitive Measures, Its Axiomatic Properties and Applications," Economics Discussion Papers 2911, University of Essex, Department of Economics.
    20. Walter Bossert & Satya R. Chakravarty & Conchita D’Ambrosio, 2019. "Poverty and Time," Themes in Economics, in: Satya R. Chakravarty (ed.), Poverty, Social Exclusion and Stochastic Dominance, pages 63-82, Springer.
      • BOSSERT, Walter & CHAKRAVARTY, Satya R. & D’AMBROSIO, Conchita, 2008. "Poverty and Time," Cahiers de recherche 05-2008, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
      • Walter Bossert & Satya R. Chakravarty & Conchita D'Ambrosio, 2010. "Poverty and Time," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2010-074, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
      • Walter Bossert & Satya R. Chakravarty & Conchita D’Ambrosio, 2008. "Poverty and Time," Working Papers 87, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
      • BOSSERT, Walter & CHAKRAVARTY, Satya R. & D’AMBROSIO, Conchita, 2008. "Poverty and Time," Cahiers de recherche 2008-05, Universite de Montreal, Departement de sciences economiques.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Measurement of unemployment; Welfare costs of unemployment; Distribution;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J60 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - General
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search
    • J68 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Public Policy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:ind:igiwpp:2014-026. 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: Shamprasad M. Pujar (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/igidrin.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.