Why Are Social Inequalities So Durable? An Experimental Test of the Effects

Abstract. If discrimination against an historically oppressed social group is dismantled, will the group forge ahead? This paper presents experimental evidence that a history of social and legal disabilities may have persistent effects through its impact on expectations. We ran eight experimental treatments employing 642 junior high school student volunteers in village India. When the subjects ’ social identity (caste) was announced, low-caste but not high-caste individuals performed much worse under a variety of economic incentives, compared with a control group whose caste identity was not announced. When a non-human factor (a random draw) was introduced that in part determined rewards, the caste gap disappeared. The experimental results suggest that when caste identity is public information, low-caste subjects anticipate that their effort will be poorly rewarded. Outlin