| dc.description.abstract | This paper uses micro data from the 1998-99 Indian Time Use Survey (ITUS - covering
77,593 persons in 18,591 households in Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya,
Orissa and Haryana) to examine the relative quantitative importance of social capital and of
inequality in land ownership and caste status in determining whether a household will have to
collect water. The paper argues that time use data provides a natural metric for measuring ‘social
capital’ building activities, and for distinguishing between ‘bonding’ into groups or ‘bridging’
within communities. In India, the probability that a rural household fetches water decreases by
15.7% and 7.4% respectively when the average time spent on social interaction and communitybased
activities at the district level doubles, but it increases by 19.2% when the time in groupbased
activities doubles. Inequalities in income, land ownership and home ownership are
associated with considerably larger differences in local tap water availability. | |
