The dynamics of spatial and local inequalities in India

Abstract

This study has been prepared within the UNU-WIDER project on 'Inequality in the Giants'.

Inequality trends and dynamics in India: The bird’s-eye and the granular perspectives

“…Although income inequality has increased slightly in rural areas, the within-village proportion has stayed more or less the same over time. Mukhopadhyay and Garcés Urzainqui (2018) indicate that the absence of a rise in inequality between villages contrasts with the observation of rapidly rising inequality between districts. It seems that while districts may be diverging from one another, the villages within the districts have not seen a similar divergence.…”

“…Delving into the spatial distribution of inequality is of interest given the widely shared perception that gains from growth in India have been spatially uneven. As noted by Mukhopadhyay and Garcés Urzainqui (2018), there is a sense that a 'biased' growth process is making India 'look more and more like islands of California in a sea of Sub-Saharan Africa' (Sen and Drèze 2013). Indian cities have been singled out by their contrasting landscape of flourishing well-off residential areas and deprived slums.…”

“…To pursue these questions with nationally representative data poses challenges that require the application of a variety of methodological fixes. The study by Mukhopadhyay and Garcés Urzainqui (2018), considered in Section 4, shows that local-level inequality (within-village, in rural areas; within-block in urban areas) accounts for the bulk of overall inequality in India; understanding what occurs at the local level is thus important for understanding overall inequality. The importance and direction of change of local-level inequality is, moreover, shown to vary considerably across India's states.…”

“…Mukhopadhyay and Garcés Urzainqui (2018) acknowledge that assessments of inequality change based on these estimates should take account of the statistical imprecision associated with both sampling and imputation error. Calculating and reporting standard errors on their findings is subject to ongoing research.…”

India

“…The analysis by Mukhopadhyay and Garcés Urzainqui (2018) defines spatial units at the lowest Indian administrative level: blocks (sub-districts) in urban areas and villages in rural areas. They estimate a regression model of districtlevel real consumption expenditure per capita on a host of district-level characteristics for which information is available, as well as for lower levels of aggregation, such as physical geography, demography, structure of employment, and night-time luminosity.…”