Educational and occupational mobility across generations in India: Social and regional dimensions

Type Journal Article - Munich Personal RePEc Archive
Title Educational and occupational mobility across generations in India: Social and regional dimensions
Author(s)
Publication (Day/Month/Year) 2010
URL http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/28539/4/rm_21.pdf
Abstract
Discrimination against specific ethnic groups transcends the boundary of current generation and perpetuates across future generations as well. This is manifested as low Intergenerational Mobility in terms of both Education and Occupation in the developing countries, in general, and among specific ethnic groups within those countries, in particular. The present paper examines the extent of intergenerational mobility in both educational and occupational attainments for diverse ethnic groups in India to understand the inertia of the prevalent discrimination. The results indicate strong intergenerational stickiness in both educational achievement and occupational distribution among the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs), who have been discriminated against historically. Occupational mobility is lower than educational mobility, indicating that educational progress is not being transformed into occupational improvement and brings up the possibility of discrimination in the labour market. This also brings to the fore the fact that historical discrimination and social exclusion have had a long run effect and that the inertia is quite strong. The regional pattern suggests that mobility levels, in general, are lower in many of the lagging states and that the mobility of the excluded groups is lower than that of the advanced classes in most of the regions. Initiating targeted action to improve the educational situation among the excluded classes and encouraging occupational diversification among them seem to be important policy suggestions.

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