Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/35245 
Year of Publication: 
2008
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 3453
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
Affirmative action has been at the heart of public policies towards the socially disadvantaged in India. Compensatory discrimination policies which have been adopted for the Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) since independence were recommended for Other Backward Classes (OBC) by the Mandal Commission established by the Indian government in 1979. We examine why OBC have lower living standards, as measured by per capita household consumption expenditures, relative to the mainstream population, and whether these reasons are similar to those observed for SC and ST. We find that while the causes of the living standard gap for the OBC are broadly similar to those for the SC and ST, the role of educational attainment in explaining the gap is higher in importance for the OBC.
Subjects: 
Living standards
caste
reservation policy
decomposition
JEL: 
I32
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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