Community based livelihood interventions, which focus directly on increasing income and employment, have become an increasingly important component of large-scale poverty reduction programmes. We evaluate the impact of a participatory livelihoods intervention -the Tamil Nadu Empowerment and Poverty Reduction (Pudhu Vaazhvu) Project (PVP) using propensity score matching methods. The paper explores the impact of PVP on its core goals of empowering women and the rural poor, improving their economic welfare, and facilitating public action. We find significant effects of PVP on reducing the incidence of high cost debt and diversifying livelihoods. We also find evidence of women's empowerment, and increased political participation.

Indian society is highly stratified and hierarchical. Caste, class, and gender all contribute to an individual’s status. A large body of literature explores the importance of each of these. This chapter examines the relationship between caste and gender inequality in three states in India. When households are grouped using conventional, government-defined categories of caste, we find patterns that are consistent with existing literature: lower-caste women are more likely to participate in the labour market, have greater decision making autonomy within their households, and experience greater freedom of movement. When households are grouped by the narrower sub-caste categories of jati, where caste is lived and experienced, we find the relationships are far more varied and nuanced. These results suggest that focusing on broad caste categories such as ‘scheduled castes’ and ‘scheduled tribes’ can be misleading for understanding the relationship between caste and gender.

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent. Policy Research Working Paper 8512 Caste is a persistent driver of inequality in India, and it is generally analyzed with government-defined broad categories, such as Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe. In everyday life, however, caste is lived and experienced as jati, which is a local system of stratification. Little is known about economic inequality at the jati level. This paper uses data from poor rural districts in Bihar to explore expenditure inequality at the jati level. Inequality decompositions show much more variation between jatis than between broad caste categories. The analysis finds that even within generally disadvantaged Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, some jatis are significantly worse off than others. Consistent with previous work, the paper also finds that inequality is largely driven by inequality within jatis. This finding has implications for the implementation of largescale poverty alleviation programs: the benefits of programs intended for disadvantaged castes are concentrated among specific jatis. This paper is a product of the Development Research Group, Development Economics. It is part of a larger effort by the World Bank to provide open access to its research and make a contribution to development policy discussions around the world.

This study has been prepared within the UNU-WIDER project on 'Gender and development'.

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