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

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. (JEL H76, J15, O15, O17, O18, R23)