Unequal Achievements in Level of School Life Expectancy: The Case for Focusing on Marginalised Groups – Evidence from India

Abstract

Higher level of educational attainment is the first step towards facilitating acquisition of job oriented skills and improving the chances of becoming employable and getting higher wages. Using a nationally representative data set from India for the year 2007-08, a period coinciding with the onset of the financial crisis and the food price inflation, we present life table analysis depicting the probability of children (aged 6-18 years) continuing in school and estimates of school life expectancy (SLE) for the major states of India. We also estimate a Cox proportional hazard model in order to understand the factors determining the educational attainment of children aged 6-18 years. In urban India, we find that SLE for girls to be higher than for boys and the converse to be true in rural India. We find that distance to school, the social group to which the child belongs and the child’s religious background as important determinants of educational attainment. This provides a rationale for improving access to schools and also for a policy targeted at social and religious groups. In order to understand policy response, we explore the case of Karnataka and examine the correlation between SLE and poverty at a disaggregated level. In Karnataka, we find preliminary evidence to suggest that that in the period of reforms poverty reduction has been the slowest in the region with the lowest SLE and lower probability of continuation in school. This provides the rationale for geographical targeting in pockets of educational poverty.