Social divisions in school participation and attainment in India: 1983-2004

Asadullah, M. N., Kambhampati, U. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5906-2394 and Lopez Boo, F. (2014) Social divisions in school participation and attainment in India: 1983-2004. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 38 (4). pp. 869-893. ISSN 1464-3545 doi: 10.1093/cje/bet006

Abstract/Summary

This study documents the size and nature of “Hindu-Muslim” and “boy-girl” gaps in children’s school participation and attainments in India. Individual-level data from two successive rounds of the National Sample Survey suggest that considerable progress has been made in decreasing the Hindu-Muslim gap. Nonetheless, the gap remains sizable even after controlling for numerous socio-economic and parental covariates, and the Muslim educational disadvantage in India today is greater than that experienced by girls and Scheduled Caste Hindu children. A gender gap still appears within as well as between communities, though it is smaller within Muslim communities. While differences in gender and other demographic and socio-economic covariates have recently become more important in explaining the Hindu-Muslim gap, those differences altogether explain only 25 percent to 45 percent of the observed schooling gap.