Intergenerational occupational mobility in India across social groups

Using IHDS-II (2011–2012), the main issue addressed in the present paper is: to what extent the choice regarding the sectors of employment has changed across two generations for different social groups. The job reservation policy is termed as effective if the chances of representation in public sector jobs increase for those individuals who belong to the Scheduled Caste and the Scheduled Tribes category. Using the mobility measures and Altham Statistics (Long and Ferrie in American Economic Review, 103(4):1109–37, 2013), we found sons belonging to the scheduled caste (SC) are significantly more mobile than the sons belonging to the General category or scheduled tribe (ST). Between SC and ST, the latter shows greater persistence in father’s sector of employment if father is a public sector employee. We have performed regression analyses to examine the extent of mobility between sectors of employment and study the effectiveness of job reservation policy. Ours findings are as follows: sons are more likely to be in business sector if father is also in business sector rather than jobs sector, the chances of representation in public sector jobs increases for Scheduled Tribe sons. This indicates that job reservation policy is partially effective for ST sons. We also found that the likelihood of sons being employed in different sector than that of their fathers’ increases with the increase in education of son and for those sons who lives in urban household.