Working Paper: NBER ID: w16509
Authors: Aimee Chin; Nishith Prakash
Abstract: We examine the impact of political reservation for disadvantaged minority groups on poverty. To address the concern that political reservation is endogenous, we take advantage of the state-time variation in reservation in state legislative assemblies in India generated by national policies that cause reservations to be revised and the time lags with which revised reservations are implemented. Using data on sixteen major Indian states for the period 1960-2000, we find that increasing the share of seats reserved for Scheduled Tribes significantly reduces poverty while increasing the share of seats reserved for Scheduled Castes has no impact on poverty. Political reservation for Scheduled Tribes has a greater effect on rural poverty than urban poverty, and appears to benefit people near the poverty line as well as those far below it.
Keywords: Political Reservation; Poverty; Affirmative Action; India
JEL Codes: I38; J15; J78
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Increasing the share of seats reserved for Scheduled Tribes (ST) (J15) | Reduces poverty (I32) |
| Increasing the share of seats reserved for Scheduled Tribes (ST) (J15) | Reduces rural poverty (O18) |
| Increasing the share of seats reserved for Scheduled Castes (SC) (J15) | No significant effect on poverty outcomes (I32) |
| ST reservations (R50) | Increased welfare spending targeted at the poor (H53) |
| SC reservations (L42) | Government jobs that may not directly benefit the poorest members (J68) |