School Participation in Rural India.

This paper presents an analysis of the determinant of school participation in rural north India, based on a recent household survey which includes detailed information on school characteristics. School participation especially among girls, responds to a wide range of variables, including parental education and motivation, social background, dependency ratios, work opportunities, village development, teacher posting , teacher regularity and mid-day meals. The remarkable lead achieved by the state of Himachal Pradesh is fully accounted for by these variables. School quality matters, but it is not related in a simply way to specific inputs.Education, India, Child Labour, School Quality

Does the Labour Market Explain Lower Female Schooling in India?

Labour market discrimination against women and parental discrimination against daughters are two of the most commonly cited explanations of the gender gap in education in developing countries. This study empirically tests the labour market explanation for India using household survey data collected in urban Uttar Pradesh in 1995. It estimates workforce participation functions and selectivity-corrected earnings fluctuations, and calculates the rates of return to education for the two sexes. Using the Blinder-Oaxaca method, the gross gender difference in earnings is decomposed into the part that is explained by men and women's differential characteristics and the part that is due to labour market discrimination. The results reveal that there is substantial omitted family background bias in the estimates of returns and that, contrary to received wisdom, the rates of returns to education rise by education level. The analysis suggests that, as well as overall labour girls face significantly lower economic rates of returns to education than boys.Returns to education, gender, labour force participation, earnings function, selectivity correction, India.

Can private school growth foster universal literacy? Panel evidence from Indian districts

Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set the agenda for the attainment of universal literacy by 2015 primarily to be delivered by the state sector. This agenda tends to ignore the significant private school growth around the world since early 1990s, thus initiating the policy debate as to whether private school growth may foster 'education for all'. Despite growing literature on the difficulties of attaining MDGs, there is hardly any attempt to assess the role of private sector in this respect. Using India as an important case in point, we intend to bridge this gap of the literature. Results using a unique district-level panel data-set from 17 major states of India for the period 1992-2002 that we compile highlight a significant positive impact of private school growth on literacy while its effect on gender gap in literacy remains rather limited in our sample. Compared to 15-19 year olds, private school effect of literacy is stronger among 10-14 year old children. Interesting variations across the regions and also among the marginalised ethnic groups are noted. The paper offers explanations for the findings

A Political Economy of Education in India

The paper explores the political economy factors that influenced the evolution of educational institutions and shaped the legislation that now governs the education sector in UP. The study focuses on the extent of and reasons for teachers' participation in politics, the evolution and activities of their unions, the size of their representation in the state legislature and the link between these and other factors such as the enactment of particular education acts in UP, teacher salaries and appointments, and the extent of centralisation in the management of schools. It attempts to draw out implications for the functioning of schools. The first part of this paper looked at the role of teacher's associations and their evolution as a powerful political pressure group in UP. The second part now analyses the impact the teacher's associations have had on the system of finances in UP, and its impact on general educational levels in the state. Even as strikes, demonstrations, sit-ins in support of more emoluments and benefits have become powerful tools in the hands of these associations, schools see a large degree of absenteeism and apathy towards students, while the state government remains unable to meet non-salary expenditure. [The paper has been published in two parts, this being the second part. The first part appeared last wee

Community, comparisons and subjective well-being in a divided society

Using South African data, the paper poses six questions about the determinants of subjective well-being. Much of the paper is concerned with the role of relative concepts. We find that comparator income, when measured as the average income of others in the local residential cluster, enters the household's utility function positively (close neighbors are 'positives', not 'negatives'), but that the income of more distant others enters negatively. Race-based comparator groups are also important in racially divided South Africa. Relative income is more important to happiness at higher levels of absolute income. Potential explanations and implications of these results are considered

Gender and Household Education Expenditure in Pakistan.

Pakistan has very large gender gaps in educational outcomes. While this suggests that girls may receive lower educational expenditure allocations than boys within households, this has never convincingly been tested. This paper investigates whether the intra-household allocation of educational expenditure in Pakistan favour males over females. It also explores two different explanations for the failure of the extant 'Engel curve' studies to detect genderdifferentiated treatment in education even where gender bias is strongly expected. Using individual level data from the latest household survey from Pakistan, we estimate Engel curves and Hurdle models to address these questions. We posit two potential channels of gender bias: bias in the decision whether to enrol/keep both sons and daughters in school, and bias in the decision of education expenditure conditional on keeping both sons and daughters. In junior and secondary school ages, evidence points to significant pro-male biases in both the enrolment decision as well as the decision of how much to spend conditional on enrolment. However, in the primary school age-group, only the former channel of bias applies. Household fixed effects estimation suggests that the observed strong gender difference in education expenditure is a within rather than an across household phenomenon

Assessing Teacher Quality in India

Using administrative data from linked private schools from one of districts in India that matches 8,319 pupils to their subject specific teachers at the senior secondary level, we estimate the importance of individual teachers on student outcomes in the high-stake senior secondary exam (at the end of twelfth-grade). We control for prior achievement at the secondary level (at the end of tenth-grade) to estimate the value added of a teacher over a two year course, and define a good teacher as one who consistently gets higher achievement for students. In addition to the prior achievement, we exploit the fact that students took exams in multiple subjects during their senior secondary exam to control for pupil fixed effects. We find a considerable variability in teacher effectiveness over a two year course a one standard deviation improvement in teacher quality adds 0.38 standard deviation points in students score. Furthermore, consistent with studies in the US, we find that although teacher quality matters, the observed characteristics explain little of the variability in teacher quality

Assessing teacher quality in India

Using administrative data from linked private schools from one Indian district that matches 8319 pupils to their subject specific teachers at the senior secondary level, we estimate the importance of individual teachers for student outcomes in the high-stake senior secondary exam (at the end of twelfth-grade) controlling for prior achievement at the secondary level (at the end of tenth-grade). In addition to controlling for prior achievement, we exploit the fact that students took exams in multiple subjects during their senior secondary exam to control for pupil fixed effects. We find a considerable variability in teacher effectiveness over a two year course—a one standard deviation improvement in teacher quality adds 0.366 standard deviation points in students score. Furthermore, consistent with studies in the US, we find that although teacher quality matters, the observed characteristics explain little of the variability in teacher quality

School participation in rural India

This paper presents an analysis of the determinant of school participation in rural north India, based on a recent household survey which includes detailed information on school characteristics. School participation especially among girls, responds to a wide range of variables, including parental education and motivation, social background, dependency ratios, work opportunities, village development, teacher posting , teacher regularity and mid-day meals. The remarkable lead achieved by the state of Himachal Pradesh is fully accounted for by these variables. School quality matters, but it is not related in a simply way to specific inputs