Economic & Political Weekly EPW October 23, 2010 vol xlv no 43
Education and health are commonly devolved functions to sub-national governments, even in nations which have a unitary rather than a federal structure. This paper investigates, for the specific case of a federal country like India, whether differences between states in shares of public spending on health and education show convergence over time, and the impact of episodic horizontal partitioning of states on this process. Our analysis rejects the hypothesis that preferences for health across state level jurisdictions are becoming more uniform over time, but for education, there is evidence of convergence, albeit at a low rate.