Earning Discrimination in Agricultural Households: A Comparative Study of Bihar and West Bengal

This study quantifies discrimination in earnings among workers of different types who come from agricultural families in India and its two eastern region states Bihar and West Bengal by using data from employment and unemployment surveys (EUS) and periodic labour force survey (PLFS). The concept of discrimination used in this study is closely related to inequality of opportunity. To measure wage discrimination we apply parametric method very similar to the methodology developed in Wendelspiess and Soloaga (2014). The Shapley decomposition is used to find out the relative contribution of gender, caste and religion to discrimination. Majority of wage workers from agricultural households are male, but their distributional patterns by circumstance characteristics are not similar for workers from cultivating families and agricultural labourers’ families. Wage discrimination is notably higher among regular paid workers than casual workers and it is much higher in Bihar. Caste difference is the major contributory factor for wage discrimination in Bihar, while gender difference is instrumental for it in West Bengal and all-India.