Join the networkPublications (370)
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
From the book: Social mobility in developing countries
THIS ARTICLE IS ON EARLY VIEW. This article provides empirical evidence on the impact of digitalisation on product upgrading in global value chains (GVCs). Analysis is done for a sample of Indian manufacturing GVC firms in the period 2001–15 from the firm-level database Prowess, using...
Much has been written on India as an outlier in Global Value Chains (GVC). Despite being one of the largest and fastest-growing markets located in direct proximity to ‘Factory Asia’ (Baldwin, 2008), India is documented to have low participation in global networks, especially amongst...
While studies have examined the association in socioeconomic status between parent and offspring, there has been relatively little research on multigenerational mobility, especially in the developing country context. Analysing data from the India Human Development Survey, this article shows that...
Based on primary data from India, this paper analyses the reasons underlying women’s low labour force participation. In developing countries, women engaged in unpaid economic work in family enterprises are often not counted as workers. Women are involved in expenditure-saving activities, i....
The impact of childbirth on the labour market participation of women has been discussed extensively in the context of developed countries, constraints on mothers’ labour market participation and earnings being characterized as the ‘motherhood penalty’. In the developing country...
Past research has provided evidence of clientelistic politics in delivery of programme benefits by local governments, or gram panchayats (GPs), and manipulation of GP programme budgets by legislators and elected officials at upper tiers in West Bengal, India. Using household panel survey data...
This study provides the first country-wide research evidence that an affirmative action policy may induce a backlash. I exploit the timing of the implementation of castebased electoral quotas across and within the states of India. The results show that the implementation of the electoral...
Informality is a pervasive phenomenon in the labour markets of developing countries. Two billion workers, representing 61.2 per cent of the world’s employed population, are in informal employment. Emerging and developing countries account for more than 93 per cent of total global informal...
Caste in India plays an instrumental role in determining access to education, jobs, public spaces, and social networks. For instance, despite state governments providing incentives to encourage intercaste marriage, only 4.9% of marriages in India take place outside caste . While numerous...
This paper studies the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the gendered dimensions of employment and mental health among urban informal-sector workers in India. First, we find that men’s employment declined by 84 percentage points post-pandemic relative to pre-pandemic, while their monthly...
From the book: Inequality in the Developing World
The contact hypothesis posits that having diverse neighbours may reduce one’s intergroup prejudice. This hypothesis is difficult to test as individuals self-select into neighbourhoods. Using a slum relocation programme in India that randomly assigned neighbours, I examine the effects of...
This paper analyses whether living in a locality with high crime against women affects the probability of early marriage—that is, marriage before the legal age of marriage of girls. We hypothesize that parents who perceive themselves to live in a high-crime locality would marry their...
Most studies of intergenerational mobility focus on adjacent generations, and there is limited knowledge about multigenerational mobility—that is, status transmission across three generations. We examine multigenerational educational and occupational mobility in India, using a nationally...
Does information dissemination among beneficiaries of welfare programmes mitigate their implementation failures? We present experimental evidence in the context of a rural public works programme in India, where we assess the impact of an intervention that involves dissemination of publicly...