# **2. Data**

Our data were drawn from a 2011 survey of 9,000 households located in seven districts in Bihar (Table 1). The survey was intended to provide baseline estimates of poverty for an impact evaluation of JEEViKA, a large anti-poverty program that aimed to empower poor rural women through investments in community institutions, technical assistance and new sources of finance. The survey was conducted in 180 randomly selected panchayats, within the 16 blocks of the seven Jeevika districts. Households were randomly selected from majority SC/ST hamlets (tolas) within these panchayats. As a result of this design, the survey oversamples SC and ST households. For our purposes however, this design provides an opportunity to understand the heterogeneity among these broad groups along the lines of caste and jati.

Our analysis relies entirely on self-reported caste identity, as reported by the head, or chief decision-maker, of the household.<sup>v</sup> We identify a jati as a distinct group in our sample if it has at least 0.5 percent of the households in the sample.<sup>vi</sup> We classify self-reported jatis into broad caste groups according to government categories: Scheduled Caste (SC), Extremely Backward Classes (EBC), Other Backward Classes (OBC), Forward Castes (FC) and Muslims.<sup>vii</sup> Table 1, panel (b) provides basic descriptive statistics on jatis, as well as the broad caste groups. Note that SCs, which include seven main jati groups, account for almost 70 percent of the sample. The next largest group is OBCs, which consists of five jatis. The EBC group is smaller, including mainly three jatis. We also include two separate muslim groups, and two jatis under Forward Castes (FCs). Scheduled Tribes (ST) are less than 1 percent of our sample. These results are likely not representative of the jati-structure of the state, but are representative of the population that is typically targeted for staterun poverty alleviation programs. It is also important to know that little is known about the precise caste-structure of the state since there has been no rigorous caste census in the post-independence era.<sup>viii</sup>

# **3. Results: Jati-Based Inequality**

## 3.1 Descriptive statistics

We begin our analysis by presenting some measures of well-being by government defined broadcaste categories as well as by jati categories. We include a household’s monthly per capita consumption expenditure (MPCE), a measure of land holdings (measured in acres), schooling (as measured by the fraction of household heads who have had any schooling), and the Gini coefficient of MPCE.

Summary statistics for caste groups are presented in Table 2. Panel (a) presents summary statistics for the broad groups. Interestingly, the MPCE does not vary considerably across broad caste groups, with Forward Castes (FC) at 664 rupees and Scheduled Castes at 600 rupees – this is likely driven by how our sample was structurd – it focussed on the poorest areas of the state. The overall Gini coefficient is quite low, at just 0.2, with little variation within broad caste groups. There is however, considerable inequality between groups in land ownership. As a whole, SCs 4