How Caste and Soil Texture Skew Consumption Within Indian Households

Indian households are not unitary decision-makers. Nor do they share resources evenly. A growing body of empirical work shows that consumption within families is systematically skewed. What explains this imbalance? Recent, data-driven research offers clear, and uncomfortable, answers.

Research Methodology
The authors of this research employ a version of the so-called collective household model. Their econometric model estimates “resource shares”: the fraction of total household expenditure allocated to different member types, by analysing household spending on “assignable goods” such as gender- and age-specific clothing. The model is estimated using nationally representative consumption data from India’s National Sample Survey (2011-12), covering over 100,000 households. The analysis distinguishes between households with adults and children (MWC) and those with only adults (MW).

Core Findings
The headline result is stark. Across Indian households, men command the largest share of resources—about 52%—followed by women at 32%, with children receiving just 16%. This implies large per-person gender gaps among adults and a strikingly low allocation to children.

Urbanisation worsens these imbalances. Compared with rural households, urban households allocate more to men and children and less to women. Per-man and per-child resource shares are higher by 5 and 2 percentage points, respectively, while per-woman shares are nearly 5 percentage points lower. As a result, the adult gender gap in resource shares nearly doubles, from 12 percentage points in rural areas to 22 percentage points in urban areas.

These differences matter for welfare measurement. Under the standard per capita assumption of equal sharing, urban per-person expenditure would be 43-52% higher than rural levels. However, accounting for intra-household inequality reveals a starkly different picture. While per-man and per-child expenditures in urban areas are predicted to be 54-68% higher, per-woman expenditure increases by only 5.5-19%. In other words, the benefits of urbanisation and higher household income are disproportionately captured by men and children, with women seeing minimal gains.

Driving Forces
What underlies these patterns? The research highlights two mechanisms.

First, caste norms. Urban households include a higher share of upper-caste families, and gender gaps in resource allocation are significantly larger in upper-caste households. This mirrors the urban pattern. Persistent caste-based norms—often associated with stricter restrictions on women’s mobility and behavior—appear to outweigh the advantages of higher average incomes and education in cities.

Second, let’s focus on women’s economic role. Interestingly, the analysis uses exogenous variation in soil texture (clayey vs. loamy) as a proxy for districts where women have historically had greater relative involvement in agriculture. In rural areas with clayey soil, where women’s agricultural labour is more valued, the gender gaps in resource shares are smaller. Yet this advantage disappears in urban settings, even within districts characterised by clayey soil. As agriculture ceases to be a primary occupation, women’s traditional economic contributions are devalued, and their bargaining power within the urban household attenuates.

Why It Matters
This research is noteworthy because of three reasons. First, it successfully applies a new and simpler methodology to estimate intra-household inequality in India. Second, it clearly points out that urbanisation, often linked to economic progress, does not automatically lead to more equitable consumption sharing and may even exacerbate gender gaps. Finally, it shifts the focus of unequal resource distribution to include children, a previously understudied group.

The central policy implication is thought-provoking. Aggregate household-level measures of poverty or welfare, like per capita expenditure, can mask severe intra-household deprivation, particularly of women in urbanising India. Poverty alleviation and transfer programmes that ignore intra-household allocation risk reinforcing existing heirarchies, with resources captured by already privileged members, typically men. Accounting for who benefits within the household is therefore essential if policy is to improve the welfare of those most at risk—women, and to a lesser extent, children.

Economic growth and urbanisation, the evidence suggests, are not enough. Without confronting entrenched social norms and shifts in women’s economic bargaining power, inequality will continue to thrive behind closed doors. 

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