Читать книгу The Political Economy of the BRICS Countries - Группа авторов - Страница 47

Relative disparities in well-being are often the concerns of the policymakers since sharpening disparities have the potential for creating conflicts in societies. Inequality between socially identifiable groups of people is considered ‘politically more salient and consequential than interpersonal comparison’ (Subramanian, 2011). Besides being considered intrinsically bad from an ethical standpoint, inequality between groups, what is often called ‘horizontal inequality’, has also been seen as having negative consequences on social coherence and peace (Stewart et al., 2005), even though the relationship between such inequality and the outbreak of violent conflict is not straightforward. There is perhaps an inverted U-shaped relationship between the two. When there is a large gap between the privileged and the disadvantaged groups, the disparity is either accepted with resignation or the privileged group might show some amount of magnanimity towards the less privileged so long as there is little threat from the bottom. The potential for conflict intensifies as the gap between the groups diminishes. While analyzing the occurrence of communal riots in India, Mitra and Ray (2014) find evidence in support of this hypothesis.

Between-group inequality also has an important bearing on the concept of inequality of opportunity. One way of assessing inequality of opportunity is the one that relies on the distinction between ‘circumstances’ and ‘effort’. While the unequal distribution of outcome across individuals may result from the differential efforts they put in to better their lives, it could also be due to the unequal circumstances they are in. The circumstances are defined to be those conditions which are beyond the control of the individual. In this conceptualization, individuals within a group are assumed to share the same circumstances and groups differ in terms of circumstances. If there was a systematic disparity between the average achievement levels of two different groups, it could be attributed to differences in circumstances, and as the argument goes, the focus of public policy should be on reducing the disparity due to circumstances.

In a society where individuals participating in the economic process are endowed with unequal quantities not only of economic assets but also of social assets, exclusion takes different forms. By social assets, we mean those ‘goods’ that belong to the realm of rights and entitlements. The fact that unequal access to publicly provided goods cannot be explained by the market process calls for such categories as social assets that include both political (e.g. citizenship rights) and cultural assets (i.e. ethnic markers such as ethnicity, religion, language, and so on). Access to employment, education, and productive assets, which is considered to be crucial in determining economic circumstances, varies across social groups in a manner which lies outside the control of an individual. Racial or caste identification of workers can interact with the social processes of human capital accumulation in communities and human capital valuation by employers in ways that generate externalities. In the presence of such externalities, as economic theory suggests, market processes may not lead to efficient outcomes. In the new economics of race, there is an emphasis on the links between under-investment in human capital due to circumstances and labor market outcomes.