Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/globdv/v4y2013i2p253-281n2.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Evolution of Consumption and Wealth Inequality in India: A Quantitative Assessment

Author

Listed:
  • Subramanian Sreenivasan

    (Madras Institute of Development Studies, 79 Second Main Road, Gandhinagar, Adyar, Chennai 600 020, Tamil Nadu, India)

  • Jayaraj Dhairiyarayar

    (Madras Institute of Development Studies, 79 Second Main Road, Gandhinagar, Adyar, Chennai 600 020, Tamil Nadu, India)

Abstract
In this paper we undertake a fairly straightforward quantitative assessment of trends in inequality in the distribution of consumption expenditure and of household wealth in India. While it is customary to employ, in applied work, only relative measures whose value basis is seldom subjected to any serious critical scrutiny, the present paper assesses inequality in terms of both absolute and intermediate measures, in addition to relative measures. It is found that our judgment of inequality trends is indeed influenced by the particular conception – relative, absolute or intermediate – of inequality that we may be inclined to favour. In particular, intermediate measures avoid the arguably “extreme” values underlying relative and absolute measures, and if we go by intermediate rather than relative indices, then we find that inequality in India must be judged to be increasing rather than essentially trend-less, as relative approaches to assessing inequality suggest.

Suggested Citation

  • Subramanian Sreenivasan & Jayaraj Dhairiyarayar, 2013. "The Evolution of Consumption and Wealth Inequality in India: A Quantitative Assessment," Journal of Globalization and Development, De Gruyter, vol. 4(2), pages 253-281, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:globdv:v:4:y:2013:i:2:p:253-281:n:2
    DOI: 10.1515/jgd-2013-0018
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1515/jgd-2013-0018
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1515/jgd-2013-0018?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Claudio Zoli, 2012. "Characterizing Inequality Equivalence Criteria," Working Papers 32/2012, University of Verona, Department of Economics.
    2. Francisco Azpitarte & Olga Alonso-Villar, 2011. "Ray-invariant intermediate inequality measures: A Lorenz dominance criterion," Working Papers 226, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    3. Bossert, Walter & Pfingsten, Andreas, 1990. "Intermediate inequality: concepts, indices, and welfare implications," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 19(2), pages 117-134, April.
    4. Sripad Motiram & Karthikeya Naraparaju, 2013. "Growth and deprivation in India: What does recent data say?," Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai Working Papers 2013-005, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, India.
    5. Kolm, Serge-Christophe, 1976. "Unequal inequalities. II," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 82-111, August.
    6. Tateo Yoshida, 2005. "Social welfare rankings of income distributions A new parametric concept of intermediate inequality," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 24(3), pages 557-574, June.
    7. Bhalla, Surjit, 2011. "Inclusion and growth in India: some facts, some conclusions," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 38366, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    8. Anirban Mitra & Debraj Ray, 2014. "Implications of an Economic Theory of Conflict: Hindu-Muslim Violence in India," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 122(4), pages 719-765.
    9. P. Jenkins, Stephen & Jäntti, Markus, 2005. "Methods for summarizing and comparing wealth distributions," ISER Working Paper Series 2005-05, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    10. Satya Chakravarty & Swami Tyagarupananda, 2009. "The subgroup decomposable intermediate indices of inequality," Spanish Economic Review, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 11(2), pages 83-97, June.
    11. repec:bla:revinw:v:47:y:2001:i:2:p:221-37 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Buhong Zheng, 2007. "Unit‐Consistent Decomposable Inequality Measures," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 74(293), pages 97-111, February.
    13. Sripad Motiram & Karthikeya Naraparaju, 2013. "Growth and Deprivation in India: What Does Recent Data Say?," Working Papers id:5279, eSocialSciences.
    14. Kristof BOSMANS & Koen DECANCQ & André DECOSTER, 2011. "The evolution of global inequality: absolute, relative and intermediate views," Working Papers of Department of Economics, Leuven ces11.03, KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), Department of Economics, Leuven.
    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. Marlin Jason Fortuin & Gerhard Philip Maree Grebe & Patricia Lindelwa Makoni, 2022. "Wealth Inequality in South Africa—The Role of Government Policy," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 15(6), pages 1-11, May.
    2. Arun Frey, 2018. "The case for convergence: assessing regional income distribution in Asia and the Pacific," Asia-Pacific Sustainable Development Journal, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), vol. 25(2), pages 1-19, December.

    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. D. Jayaraj & S. Sreenivasan, 2015. "Growth and inequality in the distribution of India's consumption expenditure: 1983 to 2009-10," WIDER Working Paper Series 025, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    2. Subbu Subramanian, 2014. "Dividing a cake (or) Distributional values in the measurement of economic inequality: an expository note," The Journal of Philosophical Economics, Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies, The Journal of Philosophical Economics, vol. 7(2), May.
    3. Sreenivasan Subramanian & D. Jayaraj, 2015. "Growth and Inequality in the Distribution of India's Consumption Expenditure: 1983 to 2009-10," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2015-025, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    4. Francisco Azpitarte & Olga Alonso-Villar, 2012. "A Dominance Criterion for Measuring Income Inequality from a Centrist View: The Case of Australia," Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series wp2012n03, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne.
    5. Coral Río & Olga Alonso-Villar, 2010. "New unit-consistent intermediate inequality indices," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 42(3), pages 505-521, March.
    6. Gustav Kjellsson & Ulf-G. Gerdtham, 2013. "Lost in Translation: Rethinking the Inequality Equivalence Criteria for Bounded Health Variables," Research on Economic Inequality, in: Health and Inequality, volume 21, pages 3-32, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    7. Paul Allanson & Dennis Petrie, 2014. "Understanding The Vertical Equity Judgements Underpinning Health Inequality Measures," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(11), pages 1390-1396, November.
    8. Coral del Río & Olga Alonso-Villar, 2008. "Rankings of income distributions: a note on intermediate inequality indices," Research on Economic Inequality, in: Inequality and Opportunity: Papers from the Second ECINEQ Society Meeting, pages 213-229, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    9. Indraneel Dasgupta & Ravi Kanbur, 2011. "Does philanthropy reduce inequality?," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 9(1), pages 1-21, March.
    10. Indraneel Dasgupta & Ravi Kanbur, 2006. "Should Egalitarians Expropriate Philanthropists?," CEDI Discussion Paper Series 06-11, Centre for Economic Development and Institutions(CEDI), Brunel University.
    11. Francisco Azpitarte & Olga Alonso-Villar, 2011. "Ray-invariant intermediate inequality measures: A Lorenz dominance criterion," Working Papers 226, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    12. Manfred Krtscha, 2017. "Some axiomatics of inequality measurement, with specific reference to intermediate indices," Working Papers 445, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    13. Claudio Zoli, 2018. "A Note on Progressive Taxation and Inequality Equivalence," Research on Economic Inequality, in: Inequality, Taxation and Intergenerational Transmission, volume 26, pages 15-33, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    14. Subramanian S., 2017. "On Comprehensively Intermediate Measures of Inequality and Poverty, with an Illustrative Application to Global Data," Journal of Globalization and Development, De Gruyter, vol. 8(2), pages 1-18, December.
    15. Casilda Lasso de la Vega & Christian Seidl, 2007. "The Impossibility of a Just Pigouvian," Working Papers 69, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    16. Miguel Niño‐Zarazúa & Laurence Roope & Finn Tarp, 2017. "Global Inequality: Relatively Lower, Absolutely Higher," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 63(4), pages 661-684, December.
    17. Marko Ledić & Ivica Rubil & Ivica Urban, 2023. "Tax progressivity and social welfare with a continuum of inequality views," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 30(5), pages 1266-1296, October.
    18. Satya Chakravarty & Swami Tyagarupananda, 2009. "The subgroup decomposable intermediate indices of inequality," Spanish Economic Review, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 11(2), pages 83-97, June.
    19. Florent Bresson & Kelly Labar, 2007. "“Leftist”, “Rightist” and Intermediate Decompositions of Poverty: Variations with an Application to China from 1990 to 2003," Working Papers 76, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    20. Ma Casilda Lasso de la Vega & Ana Urrutia & Henar Díez, 2010. "Unit Consistency And Bipolarization Of Income Distributions," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 56(1), pages 65-83, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Relative inequality; absolute inequality; intermediate inequality; consumption expenditure; household assets; India;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration

    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:bpj:globdv:v:4:y:2013:i:2:p:253-281:n:2. 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: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyter.com .

    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.