This paper examines the differences in welfare, as measured by per capita expenditure (PCE), between social groups in rural India across the entire welfare distribution. The paper establishes that the disadvantage suffered by two historically disadvantaged groups - Scheduled Castes (SCs) and...

"High rates of understatement are found for many government transfer programs and in many datasets. This understatement has major implications for our understanding of economic well-being and the effects of transfer programs. We provide estimates of the extent of under-reporting for ten transfer...

Social capital, Social trust, Crowding-out hypothesis, Welfare state, Social spending. - The crowding-out hypothesis asserts that the state development tends to erode social capital, that is voluntary, familial, communal and other interpersonal ties become weaker; people lose the sense of moral...