Spatial dimensions of population and development

Against the backdrop of India’s transformation from a majority rural to an increasingly urban society, this paper seeks to understand how patterns of inequality vary across city size. We use ward level data from the Indian Census to examine residential segregation by caste in small, medium and large cities within the state of Kerala. Restricting the analyses to cities in one region allows us to control for the tremendous socio-political diversity in India. Our findings resonate with other recent scholarship on caste inequalities in urban India, with small cities demonstrating the highest degree of residential segregation by caste. In contrast, larger cities show comparatively lower levels of residential segregation; perhaps due to intermixing of diverse linguistic, ethnic and regional identities that reconfigure caste relations and diminish caste based inequalities.

In the wake of the past two years of popular uprisings and revolutions in the Arab region, three theoretical explanations with a major demographic component have gained prominence. These three “new” theories posit 1) a youth bulge, 2) demographic disparities, and 3) the role of digital media, respectively as likely causes of revolution and of the success of Islamist parties in elections. Using Generalized Spatial Two-Stage Least Squares Regression to analyze sub-national data from Tunisia, preliminary results indicate that these three phenomena are not statistically significant predictors of the occurrence of protest, the timing/duration of protest, or the district vote percentage for the main Islamist party “Ennahdha.” Further analysis with both time and spatial dimensions will clarify other demographic factors that seem to be linked to protest, violence and vote outcomes, including government marginalization and women’s demographic factors.

India achieved unprecedented economic growth since the early 1990s. Questions however are raised about India’s ability to distribute the fruits of economic growth equally among individuals belonging to different socioeconomic groups. Using data from nationally representative employment and unemployment surveys, this paper explores the inclusiveness of Indian economic growth by looking at the changes in socioeconomic inequalities in regular employment over the period 1993-94 to 2009-10. Our findings reveal that, at the all India level, socioeconomic inequalities in regular employment increased minutely by 0.2 percentage points (from 39.9% to 40.1%) during 1993-94 to 2009-10. However, the changes at the regional level are mixed. However, the changes at the regional level are mixed. Regions of North, Central and East show a decrease against an increase in Western and North Eastern regions. In Southern region the socioeconomic inequalities in regular employment have remained almost same.