Households or Locations? : Cities, Catchment Areas and Prosperity in India

Li, Yue ; Rama, Martin

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: COUNTRYSIDE;    LIVING STANDARDS;    HOUSEHOLD_SIZE;    HOUSEHOLD SURVEY;    HOUSEHOLD SIZE;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-7473
RP-ID  :  WPS7473

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Policy makers in developing countries,including India, are increasingly sensitive to the linksbetween spatial transformation and economic development.However, the empirical knowledge available on those links ismost often insufficient to guide policy decisions. There isno shortage of case studies on urban agglomerations ofdifferent sorts, or of benchmarking exercises for states anddistricts, but more systematic evidence is scarce. To helpaddress this gap, this paper combines insights from povertyanalysis and urban economics, and develops a methodology toassess spatial performance with a high degree ofgranularity. This methodology is applied to India, whereindividual household survey records are mapped to “places”(both rural and urban) below the district level. Theanalysis disentangles the contributions householdcharacteristics and locations make to labor earnings,proxied by nominal household expenditure per capita. Thepaper shows that one-third of the variation in predictedlabor earnings is explained by the locations wherehouseholds reside and by the interaction between theselocations and household characteristics such as education.In parallel, this methodology provides a workable metric todescribe spatial productivity patterns across India. Thepaper shows that there is a gradation of spatial performanceacross places, rather than a clear rural-urban divide. Italso finds that distance matters: places with higherproductivity are close to each other, but some spread theirprosperity over much broader areas than others. Using thespatial distribution of this metric across India, the paperfurther classifies places at below-district level into fourtiers: top locations, their catchment areas, averagelocations, and bottom locations. The analysis finds thatsome small cities are among the top locations, while somelarge cities are not. It also finds that top locations andtheir catchment areas include many high-performing ruralplaces, and are not necessarily more unequal than averagelocations. Preliminary analysis reveals that these toplocations and their catchment areas display characteristicsthat are generally believed to drive agglomeration economiesand contribute to faster productivity growth.