Title: Social inequalities and inherent disadvantages in asset holding among Indian women

Authors: Rimon Saha; Namrata Thapa; Ladenla Lama

Addresses: Centre for Development Studies, Kerala, India ' Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi, India ' Centre for Development Studies, Kerala, India

Abstract: This paper focuses on finding the pattern of horizontal inequality in wealth within Indian women by forming well defined social groups and measures the inter-group inequality among them using National Family Health Survey-4-unit level data. It also analyses the role of inherent deprivation in explaining the differences in asset holding between historically vulnerable caste, religious groups and recognises the residential disadvantages between rural and urban women. Using decomposition of Gini-coefficient, the inter-personal wealth inequality is found to be the highest among rural and scheduled tribe women. Furthermore, women in regions like central and eastern India faced relatively worse distribution of wealth compared to other regions. Additionally, Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition analysis suggests the presence of visible caste and religion-based disadvantages in asset holding among Indian women. We also observe prominent disadvantages faced by the rural women compared to their urban counterparts.

Keywords: intra-gender inequality; caste-based deprivation; residential disadvantages; religious disadvantages; wealth inequality.

DOI: 10.1504/IJGSDS.2022.125705

International Journal of Gender Studies in Developing Societies, 2022 Vol.4 No.4, pp.339 - 359

Received: 02 Dec 2021
Accepted: 26 May 2022
Published online: 26 Sep 2022 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article