Economic Inequality in India: Role of Public Education Expenditure

Economic inequality in the distribution of wealth or income continues to be a very serious problem for any community. Economic inequality in a region/country normally refers to absence of equality in the distribution of economic variables like income, expenditure, wealth etc. among the individuals/households in that region/country. Economic inequality for India and its states can be estimated only for expenditure because National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) collects...
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Economic inequality in the distribution of wealth or income continues to be a very serious problem for any community. Economic inequality in a region/country normally refers to absence of equality in the distribution of economic variables like income, expenditure, wealth etc. among the individuals/households in that region/country.
Economic inequality for India and its states can be estimated only for expenditure because National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) collects household data only for expenditure of the sample households and NSSO itself estimates inequality with the help of such data by two widely and conveniently used relative measures of inequality - the Gini coefficient and the Lorenz curve.
However, many researchers raise objection against these two relative measures of inequality. Many of them argue that both relative and absolute measures of inequality should be given equal importance in judging the real nature of inequality. In addition, economic inequality can be captured by different families of inequality measures of which two are very popular and convenient - the Lorenz-Gini family and the SD-CV family. This work Book to take up the debate between relative measure of inequality and absolute measure of inequality and to estimate the trends and patterns of inequality by considering relative, index and absolute inequality in Lorenz-Gini family and SD-CV family in rural and urban India and its major states from 1983 to 2011-12. This Book also tries to introduce the estimates of combined inequality for India and its major states for the same period by combining the rural and urban sectors together.
Education expenditure is one of the important factors in explaining economic inequality. Using panel data for 15 major states of India for the period 1983 to 2011-12 this book examines whether public expenditure on education succeeds to reduce economic inequality in India or not.
This book is primarily intended to serve as a handbook for undergraduate, postgraduate, M.Phil., and Ph.D. students in social sciences for analyzing the data.