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Income and Gender Inequality in India in the Post-WTO Period

Global Tariff War: Economic, Political and Social Implications

ISBN: 978-1-80071-315-4, eISBN: 978-1-80071-314-7

Publication date: 9 March 2021

Abstract

In the post-WTO era, the volume of international trade has grown in a good amount in India. At the same time, the continuous lowering and removing of the trade barriers of different forms create several impacts on poverty and inequality. In this chapter, we tried to capture the issues of inequality, specially the gender inequality, which has worsened a lot in the last two decades. In one side, trade openness enhanced the growth, but at the cost of increasing inequality. Theil index and Atkinson index both show an increasing trend of inequality. The Gender Inequality Index (GII) and the Inequality-adjusted Human Development or Gender Development Indices are also showing increasing inequality. The state-wise analysis of such inequality indices is varying a lot over the study period. This chapter throws some insight into these issues and concludes that in the post-WTO era income inequality has increased a lot with a very few exceptions. In some states (like Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, and Punjab) only export have increased the employment in the unorganized sectors. The study concludes that exports have generated additional employment and incomes in the economy, but these gains have not trickled down to the poor. The study is confined to Indian cases only and covers the time period 2000–2001 to 2018–2019.

Keywords

Citation

Sengupta, T. and Mukherjee, S. (2021), "Income and Gender Inequality in India in the Post-WTO Period", Das, R.C. (Ed.) Global Tariff War: Economic, Political and Social Implications, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 325-340. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80071-314-720211026

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

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