Traditional Institutions Meet the Modern World: Caste, Gender, and Schooling Choice in a Globalizing Economy
American Economic Review
vol. 96,
no. 4, September 2006
(pp. 1225-1252)
Abstract
This paper addresses the question of how traditional institutions interact with the forces of globalization to shape the economic mobility and welfare of particular groups of individuals in the new economy. We explore the role of one such traditional institutionthe caste systemin shaping career choices by gender in Bombay using new survey data on school enrollment and income over the past 20 years. We find that male working-classlower-castenetworks continue to channel boys into local language schools that lead to the traditional occupation, despite the fact that returns to nontraditional white-collar occupations rose substantially in the 1990s, suggesting the possibility of a dynamic inefficiency. In contrast, lower-caste girls, who historically had low labor market participation rates and so did not benefit from the network, are taking full advantage of the opportunities that became available in the new economy by switching rapidly to English schools. (JEL I21, J16, O15, Z13)Citation
Munshi, Kaivan, and Mark Rosenzweig. 2006. "Traditional Institutions Meet the Modern World: Caste, Gender, and Schooling Choice in a Globalizing Economy." American Economic Review, 96 (4): 1225-1252. DOI: 10.1257/aer.96.4.1225Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- I21 Analysis of Education
- J16 Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
- O15 Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
- Z13 Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Social and Economic Stratification