Caste System
In standard economics, individuals are rational actors and economic forces undermine institutions that impose large inefficiencies. The persistence of the caste system is evidence of the need for psychologically more realistic models of decision-ma...
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| Language: | English en_US |
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Washington, DC: World Bank
2017
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/452461482847661084/Caste-system http://hdl.handle.net/10986/25832 |
| Summary: | In standard economics, individuals are
rational actors and economic forces undermine institutions
that impose large inefficiencies. The persistence of the
caste system is evidence of the need for psychologically
more realistic models of decision-making in economics. The
caste system divides South Asian society into hereditary
groups whose lowest ranks are represented as innately
polluted. After the historical encounter between colonial
powers and South Asia, caste became capable of expressing
and systematizing what had been diverse forms of social
identity, community, and organization. This paper reviews
work that estimates the economic costs of the caste system
in particular environments: (1) In North India,
discrimination between higher-caste landowners and
lower-caste tenants in markets for groundwater for
irrigation reduces the tenants' agricultural yields by
45 percent. (2) Making caste identity public in North Indian
classrooms reduces the cognitive performance of low-caste
boys by 23 percent. (3) Because of lower-caste men's
control of working-class occupations, the proportion of
lower-caste children enrolled in English-language schools in
Mumbai after India opened itself up to the world market grew
only one-fourth as quickly for boys as for girls,
restricting boys' occupational mobility. Given the
benefit of access to caste-based networks, most Indians
practice caste endogamy. The caste system is a dramatic
example of an institution to which it may pay each
individual to conform because others conform. The caste
system also illustrates the two-way influence between people
and institutions emphasized in psychology: people construct
institutions, and institutions shape understandings.
Abolition by law of an institution may change neither
understandings nor behavior. |
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