%0 Report
        %A Duleep, Harriet
        %T The Labor/Land Ratio and India's Caste System
        %D 2012
        %8 2012 May
        %I Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        %C Bonn
        %7 IZA Discussion Paper
        %N 6612
        %U https://www.iza.org/publications/dp6612
        %X This paper proposes that India's caste system and involuntary labor were joint responses by a nonworking landowning class to a low labor/land ratio in which the rules of the caste system supported the institution of involuntary labor. The hypothesis is tested in two ways: longitudinally, with data from ancient religious texts, and cross-sectionally, with twentieth-century statistics on regional population/land ratios linked to anthropological measures of caste-system rigidity. Both the longitudinal and cross-sectional evidence suggest that the labor/land ratio affected the caste system's development, persistence, and rigidity over time and across regions of India.
        %K labor-to-land ratio
%K population
%K involuntary labor
%K immobility
%K value of life
%K marginal product of labor
%K market wage