American Economic Review Vol. 116 No. 11 2026

Residential Segregation and Unequal Access to Local Public Services in India: Evidence from 1.5 Million Neighborhoods

Sam Asher¹; Kritarth Jha²; Paul Novosad²; Anjali Adukia²; Brandon Tan³

¹ Imperial College London (email: ) · ² Development Data Lab (email: ) · ³ Dartmouth College (email: )

Abstract

We study residential segregation and access to public services across 1.5 million urban and rural neighborhoods in India. Muslim and Scheduled Caste segregation in India is high by global standards and only slightly lower than Black-White segregation in the United States. Within cities, public facilities and infrastructure are systematically less available in Muslim and Scheduled Caste neighborhoods. Nearly all regressive allocation is across neighborhoods within cities—at the most informal and least studied form of government. These inequalities are not visible in the aggregate data typically used for research and policy.

DOI

10.1257/aer.20240179

Volume

116

Issue

11

Pages

4041-4076

Language

en

Sources

crossref openalex

Cite

APA 7 MLA 9 Chicago (author–date) Harvard Elsevier Harvard (JFE, JBF…) The Accounting Review Academy of Management American Marketing Association INFORMS (Management Science) Copy citation Copied ✓