Eusocial insects are characterized by reproductive division of labor, cooperative brood care, and the presence of a sterile worker caste. It is generally accepted that caste determination, including the differentiation of females into sterile workers and reproductive queens, is determined by environmental factors. In contrast, we find that in the red harvester ant, Pogonomyrmex barbatus, an ind...

The caste fate of developing female honey bee larvae is strictly socially regulated by adult nurse workers. As a result of this social regulation, nurse-expressed genes as well as larval-expressed genes may affect caste expression and evolution. We used a novel transcriptomic approach to identify genes with putative direct and indirect effects on honey bee caste development, and we subsequently...

BACKGROUND Caste, a proxy of socioeconomic position, can influence the neurodevelopment of children through several pathways, including exposure to toxic elements. Studies from developing countries where caste is represented by prevailing caste groups and people are highly exposed to toxic elements can provide useful insights into the mechanisms of neurodevelopmental inequities among children. ...

In contrast to most dowry oriented societies where payments have declined with modernisation, those in India have undergone signi ̄cant in°ation over the last ̄ve decades. This paper explains the di®erence between these two experiences by focusing on the role played by caste. The theoretical model contrasts caste and non-caste based societies: in the former, there exists an inherited component t...

This paper investigates whether academic peer quality in colleges reduces social distance between castes in India by examining academic peer effects across castes. Using cutoff based admission rules and a unique data set linking admission data to college exit exam scores; I find that the better quality of high-caste students has a negative effect on the performance of the low-caste students. Th...

BACKGROUND Adolescent pregnancy is a public health concern worldwide. There are disparities in the occurrence of adolescence pregnancy in different social groups and settings; however, few studies have focused on the contribution of a woman's caste in early pregnancy in Nepal. This study aimed to examine the association between caste and adolescent pregnancy; and investigate factors that influe...

Preamble The phenomenon of Caste has aroused more controversy than any other aspect of Indian life and thought. Some see India’s caste system as the defining feature of Indian culture and some have dismissed it as a colonial artefact. Since the days of the British rule, both historians and anthropologists referred to India as a ‘caste society’. Obviously this is an overstatement of the importan...

Caste Based Discrimination: Evidence and Policy Caste-based quotas in hiring have existed in the public sector in India for decades. Recently there has been debate about introducing similar quotas in private sector jobs. This paper uses an audit study to determine the extent of caste-based discrimination in the Indian private sector. On average low-caste applicants need to send 20 percent more ...

Recent debates regarding inclusion of caste in 2011 Census have raised questions about whether caste still matters in modern India. Ethnographic studies of the mid-20th century identified a variety of dimensions along which caste differentiation occurs. At the same time, whether this differentiation translates into hierarchy remains a contentious issue as does the persistence of caste, given th...

Many countries mandate affirmative action in university admissions for traditionally disadvantaged groups. Little is known about either the efficacy or costs of these programs. This paper examines affirmative action in engineering colleges in India for “lower-caste” groups. We find that it successfully targets the financially disadvantaged: the marginal upper-caste applicant comes from a more a...