Resource information
Standard approaches to decomposing how
much group differences contribute to inequality rarely show
significant between-group inequality, and are of limited use
in comparing populations with different numbers of groups.
This study applies an adaptation to the standard approach
that remedies these problems to longitudinal household data
from two Indian villages -- Palanpur in the north, and Sugao
in the west. The authors find that in Palanpur the largest
scheduled caste group failed to share in the gradual rise in
village prosperity. This would not have emerged from
standard decomposition analysis. However, in Sugao the
alternative procedure did not yield any additional insights
because income gains applied relatively evenly across castes.
