Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures and Maps
- List of Tables
- List of Abbreviations
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The Problem of the ‘Rural Middle Class(es)’
- 1 Trajectory of the Indian Middle Class: Its Size and Geographical Variations
- 2 In Search of the Rural Middle Classes: From Village Stratification to Rural Household Variations
- 3 Marx: Capital, Labour and the Rural Middle Classes
- 4 Weber: Marketable Capital, Status and the Rural Middle Classes
- 5 Bourdieu: Cultural Capital, Self-perception and the Middle-class Identity in Rural India
- Conclusion: Understanding the Rural Middle Classes
- Appendix A1 Non-farm Occupations in Rahatwade and Nandur
- Appendix A2 Caste and Occupations: The Urban Middle-Class Labour Market
- Appendix A3 Caste and Occupations in Rural India since 1991
- Appendix A4 Caste and Income Distribution
- Appendix A5 Caste and Socio-economic Indicators in Rural and Urban India
- Appendix A6 Caste Composition of Urban Middle Classes in India
- Appendix A7 Caste Composition of the Rural Middle Classes in Maharashtra
- Appendix A8 Household Survey Questionnaire 1
- Appendix A9 Household Socio-economic Survey Questionnaire 2
- References
- Index
Appendix A4 - Caste and Income Distribution
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 May 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures and Maps
- List of Tables
- List of Abbreviations
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The Problem of the ‘Rural Middle Class(es)’
- 1 Trajectory of the Indian Middle Class: Its Size and Geographical Variations
- 2 In Search of the Rural Middle Classes: From Village Stratification to Rural Household Variations
- 3 Marx: Capital, Labour and the Rural Middle Classes
- 4 Weber: Marketable Capital, Status and the Rural Middle Classes
- 5 Bourdieu: Cultural Capital, Self-perception and the Middle-class Identity in Rural India
- Conclusion: Understanding the Rural Middle Classes
- Appendix A1 Non-farm Occupations in Rahatwade and Nandur
- Appendix A2 Caste and Occupations: The Urban Middle-Class Labour Market
- Appendix A3 Caste and Occupations in Rural India since 1991
- Appendix A4 Caste and Income Distribution
- Appendix A5 Caste and Socio-economic Indicators in Rural and Urban India
- Appendix A6 Caste Composition of Urban Middle Classes in India
- Appendix A7 Caste Composition of the Rural Middle Classes in Maharashtra
- Appendix A8 Household Survey Questionnaire 1
- Appendix A9 Household Socio-economic Survey Questionnaire 2
- References
- Index
Summary
In the following section, I use data from the IHDS-II to provide information on the average annual household income among different caste groups in 2011–12 (Tables A4.1 and A4.2). Comparing the mean annual income of the different caste groups, the tables show a significant difference between the average annual household incomes across different caste groups. In both rural and urban India, Brahmins and Forward Castes have the highest average annual income and SCs and STs the lowest. However, the high value of standard deviation, represented in the last column of both the tables indicates that annual household incomes are significantly higher than the mean values, suggesting a large variation of household income within the caste groups. Such a high level of standard deviation suggests a low level of confidence in any statistical conclusion (in this case, the relationship between caste membership and household income).
The following two histograms (Figures A4.1 and A4.2) show the distribution of annual household income in rural and urban India, respectively. It is evident that the distributions are highly skewed and heavy-tailed, suggesting that there are few data points (annual household income) with extremely large values on the right side of the distribution. In simple terms, this means that the annual household incomes are very likely to be highly heterogeneous. This type of distribution is referred to as the Pareto distribution. Such a highly skewed distribution of income will create issues when we compare the statistics of the income distributions between different castes. The average and other statistical features of fat-tailed distributions are not well defined and this is easily observed in Tables A4.1 and A4.2 – the standard deviations calculated for the income within each caste is far greater than the mean value, leading to a large error in the calculated mean.
To resolve this issue, we must transform the income variable logarithmically and work with the logarithm of annual household income from this point on. The logarithmic transformation will turn the skewed distributions with extremely large values to a localised value close to the normal distribution. There are many natural variables that grow exponentially, such as expenditure and income, and to be able to apply standard statistical tests on them we need to consider them in the logarithmic space.
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- Contested CapitalRural Middle Classes in India, pp. 217 - 226Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020