The Effect of Government Expenditure on Unemployment in India: A State Level Analysis

The relationship between government size and unemployment is an important topic of study in economics. Large public expenditure has been blamed for causing higher unemployment contrary to the belief that it would help in reducing unemployment. More research on the topic, however, needs to be done as the available literature has been based largely on data from developed countries. The present paper examines the existence of the relationship in states of India by using panel data analysis. For more comprehensive study, public expenditure is divided into development, non-development, and aggregate expenditures, while the types of unemployment under consideration are usual status and current weekly status. Indeed, it has been observed that development and non-development expenditures increase both the types of unemployment though the impact of the latter is higher. The findings are important as it implies that a cut in expenditure can be an important fiscal tool to fight unemployment. It was further observed that unemployment was higher among states with a more educated population, which also suggests a revisiting of the education policy in the country. States ruled by left parties have higher unemployment rate. Higher income states as well as states with higher growth rate tend to have lower unemployment rate.