An analysis of changing inter-group economic inequalities among different caste/ethnic groups in Nepal

The main purpose of this study is to explore the changing pattern of inter-group (caste/ethnicity) economic inequality in Nepal from 1995/96 to 2010/11. The paper used the secondary data collected by the Central Bureau of Statistics of Nepal for the first (1995/96) and the third (2010/11) rounds of Nepal Living Standard Survey (NLSS). By using the adequacy of income as the main variable, the paper compared the data of the two surveys to explore the changes in inequalities between different caste/ethnic groups in fifteen years of time. Besides, the other variables such as adequacy of food consumption, liter-acy, health conditions, landownership and remittance are also analysed to ex-plore the inequality between the different castes and ethnic groups in two points of time. Unlike most of the previous research approaches which tried to link the concepts of group-inequalities as the cause of conflict, this study attempts to observe the long term changes in the lives of different caste/ethnic groups of Nepal. Therefore, this research mainly focuses on the changing pat-tern of inequalities between different caste/ethnic groups in Nepal. The findings of the research show that there have been some little but noteworthy changes in the patterns of inequality among different caste/ethnic groups. Over these fifteen years, some groups improved their perception on adequacy of income, some improved in food consumption, and some in-creased literacy while some others largely increased the remittances. Therefore, this result points at some scattered changes which were taken into considera-tion while explaining the changing patterns of the caste/ethnic groups. The increasing tendency of local, internal as well as international migration of the population provided the evidence that in spite of intervening conflict, the economy was surviving due to the remittances provided by the migrant work-ers. Due to the remittances, the position of different caste/ethnic groups has significantly changed over the years. However, there is still existence of ine-quality between different caste/ethnic groups even after the fifteen years of time. This continuity in inequalities is caused by regional and geographical vari-ations; rural-urban differences; socio-economic status of different groups and comparative level of development of different regions in Nepal.