Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/189974 
Year of Publication: 
2017
Series/Report no.: 
WIDER Working Paper No. 2017/129
Publisher: 
The United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), Helsinki
Abstract: 
This article contributes to the growing scholarship on how ethnic inequality can dampen the provision of public goods and services. On the one hand, it pushes beyond purely economic inequality to include status inequality between population groups. On other hand, it moves away from the provision of social services, conceptualized through budgetary allocations, to their effective functioning. We study one of the most serious challenges to the effective functioning of social services: the absenteeism of service providers. We provide experimental evidence that in a situation of status inequality between groups, people are more likely to be tolerant of absenteeism among service providers when the intended beneficiaries are perceived to belong to low-status ethnic groups. In particular, we present results from two complementary randomized survey experiments in India. Both show that respondents are more tolerant of teacher absenteeism when schools serve low- rather than high-caste children.
Subjects: 
caste
ethnic inequality
India
public goods provision
survey experiment
status
teacher absenteeism
JEL: 
H40
J15
O15
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
ISBN: 
978-92-9256-355-4
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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