Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/142413 
Year of Publication: 
2016
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 9974
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
We analyze the changes in earnings of paid workers (wage earners) in rural India from 2004/05 to 2011/12. Real earnings increased at all percentiles, and the percentage increase was larger at the lower end. Consequently, earnings inequality declined. Recentered Influence Function decompositions show that throughout the earnings distribution, except at the very top, both changes in 'worker characteristics' and in 'returns to these characteristics' increased earnings, with the latter having played a bigger role. Decompositions of inequality measures reveal that although the change in characteristics had an inequality increasing effect, chiefly attributable to increased education levels, inequality declined because workers at lower quantiles experienced greater improvements in returns to their characteristics than those at the top.
Subjects: 
earnings
inequality
earnings distribution
rural India
JEL: 
J30
J31
O53
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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