Published Report | PRICE

This report examines how caste-linked economic disadvantage in India has changed as the economy itself has transformed. Its purpose is neither to argue that caste has disappeared nor to treat the social hierarchy as economically unchanged. It asks a more empirical question: where do social-group gaps persist, where have they narrowed, through which mechanisms, and at what stage of the mobility process?

The report brings together harmonised PRICE’s ICE 3600 household surveys evidence on education, occupation and income; official NSO consumption data; official evidence on assets and debt; and selected published research on intergenerational mobility, labour markets, credit and entrepreneurship. The original empirical core begins in 2004–05. Earlier evidence is used as historical context where definitions and social-group classifications are sufficiently clear.

Three disciplines guide the analysis. Progress is kept distinct from convergence. Cohort change is kept distinct from parent–child intergenerational mobility. And conditional gaps are treated as outcomes to explain, not as automatic estimates of discrimination. The result is a mobility framework that follows households from Access to Position, Reward, Living Standard, Accumulation and Transmission.

The report is intended as an evidence base for researchers, policymakers, institutions and businesses interested in India’s changing social and economic structure. Its central proposition is that development has neither erased caste nor left its economic meaning unchanged.