Social Identity, Behaviour and Aspiration: Evidence from India

This special season will host two briliant scholars who is going discuss about social identity, behavirous and aspirations.

Speaker 1: Dr. Sudipa Sarkar, Warwick University

Title of the presentation: Social Identity and Aspiration – Double Jeopardy or Intersectionality? Evidence from Rural India

Abstract: This study investigates the relationship between individuals’ social identity and their future aspirations in a developing country. We analyse primary survey data from participants of a large-scale skill-training programme that targets rural poor youths in India. We focus on two dimensions of individuals’ identity: caste and gender. Our empirical findings suggest that training participants from the most socially disadvantaged groups – Scheduled Tribe (ST) and Scheduled Caste (SC) – have significantly lower income aspiration when compared to Other Backward Class (OBC) and Other Caste (OC) participants. Female participants also have significantly lower aspiration than their male counterparts. The aspiration gaps exist even after controlling for various background characteristics, including participants’ pre-training Big-5 personality traits and non-cognitive skills. Individual-level and household-level factors mediate some of the aspiration gaps based on caste and gender. We find evidence that for SC/ST female participants, the disadvantages on both caste and gender dimensions add up; this is reflected in their lower income aspiration levels, in comparison with all other groups. Thus, our results support the hypothesis of “double jeopardy” instead of “intersectionality” in this context.

Speaker 2: Dr. Smriti Sharma, Newcastle University

Title of the presentation: Social Identity, Behavior, and Personality: Evidence from India

Abstract: Hierarchies in social identities are integrally related to divergences in economic status. In India, caste is a significant social identity where discriminatory practices have resulted in poor outcomes for the lower castes. While there is considerable research on differences in economic outcomes along caste lines, there is limited work on behavioral preferences and personality traits that can also be adversely affected by such identity hierarchies, and that are important determinants of educational attainment and labor market performance. Combining rich data from incentivized tasks and surveys conducted among a large sample of university students, we find that the historically marginalized Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SCSTs) and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) report lower scores than upper castes along several dimensions of economic behavior such as competitiveness and confidence and personality traits such as grit, locus of control, and conscientiousness. Further, socioeconomic status has a limited compensatory role in mitigating these gaps.

Biographies;

Dr. Smriti Sharma:

Smriti Sharma is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Economics at Newcastle University, England. Her research specialization is in development economics, labour economics, and behavioural economics. Within these fields, her works spans the following three areas: (i) education, skills and labour markets; (ii) political economy of development; and (iii) caste and gender-based disadvantage and discrimination. She works with both secondary data and primary data collected using surveys and experiments. She obtained her PhD in economics from the Delhi School of Economics and has previously worked at the United Nations University – World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER). She is also affiliated with IZA and Global Labor Organization (GLO).

Dr. Sudipa Sarkar:

Sudipa Sarkar is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Employment Research, University of Warwick. Her research interests are in the broad areas of Labour and Development Economics. In particular, she focuses on issues relating to skills and education, future of work, decent work, poverty and inequality, and gender. Sudipa is also a Fellow at Global Labour Organisation (GLO). Before joining University of Warwick she was a Marie Curie PhD Fellow associated with a European Commission funded network, and completed her PhD from the Department of Applied Economics, University of Salamanca, Spain. Sudipa has worked in several other research organisations and projects in the past such as Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi, Institute of Rural Management Anand, and Young Lives Project (led by Oxford University) and has been a Visiting Researcher at European Foundation for Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound), Dublin.

Format: The presentations will be typically 30 min long, followed by Q & A. We are expecting upto 90 minute session!

This session is a part of the project:
Expanding the frontiers of economics: Evidence from South Asia

This project aims to organise series of special sessions on emerging areas of research in Economics. By synthesising theoretical assumptions of sociology, psychology, anthropology and political sciences, a new generation of researchers are rediscovering the principles which govern the actions and interaction among ‘economic (hu)man’.

We aim to organise monthly lectures. In this series, we hope to ensure inclusivity across different schools of thoughts and across genders.