A child’s access to health care and minimum nutrition should not depend on circumstances such as caste, religion, gender, place of birth, or other parental characteristics, which are beyond the control of a child. This paper uses two rounds of Indian National Family Health Surveys and concepts of Inequality of Opportunity and Human Opportunity Indices to measure inequality arising out of unequal access to full immunization and minimum nutrition for Indian children. The results suggest overall high level of inequality of opportunity with substantial geographical variations. Changes in inequality of opportunity in the two services during 1992-93 to 2005-06 were mixed with some geographical regions outperforming others. The findings also call for substantial policy revisions if the goal of universal access to full immunization and minimum nutrition has to be achieved.

Inequality of opportunity in Indian children: the case of immunization and nutrition

This study aims to quantify discrimination in getting jobs and earnings associated with employment in the labour market in India and analyse how much of inequality in employment and wage is due to differences in gender, caste, and religion during the high growth regime under neoliberal reform. In measuring discrimination, we use ex-ante approach of inequality of opportunity in which there is equality of opportunity in employment and earning if all individuals face the same set of opportunities regardless of their circumstances. We define employment discrimination as the lack of access to good quality job because of differences in gender, caste and religion. This study observes that job discrimination is significantly high in wage employment than in self-employment both in the rural and urban economy. While in wage employment job discrimination declined, in self-employment it increased. Discrimination against women has been increasing with the opening of new type of jobs which are primarily temporary in nature. Wage discrimination is highly associated with employment discrimination.

Job Discrimination, Earning Inequality and Policy Action: An Empirical Study with Indian Data

Panchanan Das - Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, University of Calcutta (India).Address: University of Calcutta, 56A, B. T. Road, Kolkata 700050. E-mail: panchanandaswbes@gmail.comThe objective of this study is to provide a quantifiable measure of the distributional content of education and its implications on earnings distribution by gender across different groups of people by using survey data in India. We analyze educational disparities among the children with age up to 14 years by gender, and household specific characters with Indian data. The study observes that, in the rural economy, the girls have less access to full time education than boys. In the urban region, on the other hand, the access to full time education at primary level is more for girls than for boys. The estimated coverage is less in the rural areas than in urban areas. The HOI is more among the urban children than among the rural children. Parent’s education has the highest contribution to inequality of opportunity to full time education at primary or upper primary level.

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Panchanan Das

Papers

Inequality of Opportunity in Educational Achievement in India: Implications of Earning distribution and Affirmative Action