Education Spillovers: Empirical Evidence in Rural India

Abstract

ED EPSInternational audienceEmpirical evidence of education spillovers in developing countries and rural contexts is scarce and focuses on specific channels. The purpose of this paper is to provide evidence of such spillovers in rural India, by evaluating the overall impact of neighbours' education on farm productivity. The author uses cross-sectional data from the India Human Development Survey of 2005. Spatial econometric tools are used to take into account social distance between neighbours. To be sure that the author's definition of a neighbourhood does not drive the results, three different definitions of neighbours were tested. The results show that education spillovers are substantial: one additional year in the mean level of education of neighbours increases households' farm productivity by 2 per cent. These findings are robust to changes in specification