Department of Strategy, IIM Bangalore, Bangalore, Karnataka, India.
Judge Business School and King's College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2024 Aug 7;19(8):e0307660. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0307660. eCollection 2024.
Scholars across disciplines and around the world have diverted research attention to rising income inequalities across groups and strategies to reduce them. The literature has broadly identified human capital and social capital as two potential tools to facilitate economic mobility and to reduce inequalities. However, it is not known whether these tools work equally well for stigmatized groups, particularly in societies with systemic inequalities. Analyzing data from a pan-India survey, we show that business owners from stigmatized groups (i.e., Dalits in India, who are stigmatized as untouchables) experience a business income gap of around 16% compared to others, including those business owners who are from communities that are disadvantaged but are not similarly stigmatized. We find that, instead of being reduced, this gap in fact increases at higher levels of social capital, especially bridging social capital, illustrating the social processes of stigmatization that limit the benefits that Dalits can reap from social capital. By contrast, Dalits can reap similar income benefits as others from human capital. Our results show that human capital helps stigmatized groups mitigate the implications of stigma, but social capital does not.
学者们来自不同学科和世界各地，他们将研究注意力转向了群体间不断上升的收入不平等，以及旨在减少不平等的策略。文献广泛认为人力资本和社会资本是促进经济流动和减少不平等的两个潜在工具。然而，目前尚不清楚这些工具对于受污名化的群体是否同样有效，特别是在存在系统性不平等的社会中。通过分析来自印度全范围调查的数据，我们发现与其他人相比，来自受污名化群体（即印度的达利特人，他们被污名化为不可接触者）的企业主的业务收入差距约为 16%，这其中包括那些来自处境不利但没有受到类似污名化的社区的企业主。我们发现，这种差距实际上在社会资本水平较高时反而会增加，尤其是在桥梁社会资本方面，这说明了污名化的社会过程限制了达利特人从社会资本中获得的收益。相比之下，达利特人可以像其他人一样从人力资本中获得类似的收入收益。我们的研究结果表明，人力资本有助于受污名化群体减轻污名化的影响，但社会资本却没有。
