Causality Between Cultural Diversity and Economic Growth in India: Cross-State Study, 1990-1991 through 2017-2018

Existing studies have examined only the unidirectional impact of cultural diversity on the economic performance of countries, regions, and cities, not the other ways. They have assumed the diversity as given, while it may also grow, due to in-migration of workers and entrepreneurs, with economic growth and may be dependent on it. This paper models diversity and economic growth in a bi-directional causal frame and demonstrates that economic growth has a substantial impact on religious, language, and overall cultural diversities in the major states of India. However, the Granger causality between economic growth to language diversity and overall cultural diversity is found to be stronger and more widespread across the states than the causality from economic growth to religious diversity. The findings of this paper may have significant theoretical and empirical implications, as mainly the unidirectional way the impact of cultural diversity on economic growth has been advocated and the empirical studies have been modelled to date.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12115-023-00833-0.