ABSTRACT
This paper addresses three important questions. First, what are the trends, levels and sources of income inequality in India? Second, how have been the patterns of income mobility? And finally, exploring the relationship between income mobility and income inequality in the context of India. Results, based on recent India Human Development Survey (IHDS) longitudinal data, advocate that not only is income inequality very high, nonetheless, it has increased – mainly attributable to different income sources – in India. The paper also focused on whether or not this income mobility equalizes longer-term incomes. Results suggest income mobility has resulted in-albeit not robust- equalizing longer-term incomes. Thus, based on imperative findings, the paper suggests, the nature of longer-term well-being is crucial to designing policy interventions to effectively tackle inequality and in this context, economic mobility can be seen as an avenue to long-term equality.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Aswini Kumar Mishra
Dr. Aswini Kumar Mishra is the Head and Assistant Professor in Economics, Department of Economics at BITS Pilani, K.K. Birla Goa Campus, India. His current areas of research include economic inequality and economic mobility, industrial organization, empirical development economics and behavioral economics.