Rounds Of National Sample Survey Research Articles

The Impact of Parents’ Educational and Occupational Footprints on Children: Evidence From India

This article examines the effects of parents’ educational backgrounds and career preferences on their children’s educational and employment opportunities in India’s various socio-religious groupings. Using information from India’s several National Sample Survey Rounds (2000–2012) and the Periodic Labour Force Survey Round 2018–2019, the article analyses co-resident father–son relationships. This study investigates the impact of a father’s occupational–educational status on the probability of their sons’ getting decent jobs. Additionally, the likelihood of completing a senior secondary and above level of education in relation to the educational backgrounds of the mother and father has been examined. For both occupational and educational attainments, this study uses the discrete choice model along with the logit equation. The findings indicate that the probability of getting jobs in the three mentioned occupations is restricted to sons whose fathers are already employed in similar occupations. In addition, there is a wide spectrum of inequity in access to jobs in these occupations among Socio religious communities. The father’s education has a significant impact on the possibility of receiving the senior secondary and above level of education. This study demonstrates a strong hierarchy across the father’s level of education, occupation, and socio-religious communities. This calls for conscious policy intervention to destabilize such a hierarchy. Communities must get a big push through their own resolve and timely and adequate interventions from the state and non-state actors.

Determinants of non-farm employment in Punjab: Evidence from National Sample Survey Rounds

There is growing consensus among the social scientist that for the development of rural economy, rural non-farm sector should be thriving. The present study is an attempt to study the factors enabling the rural households of Punjab to participate in the rural non-farm activities. In the present study, the household level data of National Sample Survey Organization’s employment-unemployment 50th round and 68th round is utilized. The rural households of Punjab are categorized into; self-employed, casual labourer, regular or salary earners and others in farm as well as non-farm sector. The logit regression model for both the rounds are utilised to study the factors impacting the participation as self-employed, casual labourers, and regular wage earners in rural non-farm sector. As compared to the year 1993-94, in the year 2011-12, the proportion of households earning their livelihood in rural non-farm sector has increased. Moreover, the proportion of casual labourer in rural non-farm sector has also increased. The choice of occupations among the self-employed, regular salary earners and causal labourer in the rural non-farm sector is also changing in Punjab. The factors like education, number of skilled members in the households, head’s education, household belonging to developed districts significantly impacted the choice of working in rural non-farm sector of Punjab. The study recommends that with increase in investment in education and developing the infrastructure in rural areas can develop the rural non-farm sector.

An overview of educational inequality in India: The role of social and demographic factors

ObjectiveTo assess the change in the level of educational inequality and the contribution of social factors and demographic factors.Data sourceThree rounds of National Sample Survey viz. 64th (2007–2008), 71st (2014), and 75th (2017-2018) have been used.MethodsEducation Gini is used to study the extent of educational inequality over the time period. Decomposition method is used for "within-group" and “between group” inequality. Tobit regression model is utilized to study factors influencing average years of schooling (AYS). Finally, regression-based Shapley decomposition method is used to identify factors contributing in educational inequality.ResultsThe level of AYS has improved over the period and reached to 7.7 years in 2018. Further, the level of educational inequality gone down between 2007 and 2018, but the Gini indices are still concentrated around 38%. Decomposition of the Gini and Shapley regression approach indicates that the within-group component and rural-urban division contribute the most to educational inequality. Tobit model signifies that digital exposure, household occupation, wealth quintile, and household size play a key role in determining educational attainment.ConclusionThe paper underscores the improvement of education in rural areas by focusing on school infrastructure, e-learning, educational quality, and parent involvement.

Unmet need for treatment-seeking from public health facilities in India: An analysis of sociodemographic, regional and disease-wise variations.

Treatment-seeking behaviour is closely associated with the health status of individuals and countries. About 800 million people have no access to health services in the developing world. Though the situation has been improving, the inequalities across geographical regions, socioeconomic status, and disease types continued to persist. The available literature suggests research gaps in examining the unmet need for treatment-seeking from public health facilities across sociodemographic characteristics, regions, and specific diseases. Data for this study comes from the three rounds of National Sample Survey (NSS) (2004, 2014, 2018). We applied descriptive, bivariate, and multivariable analysis to investigate the unmet need for treatment-seeking for public health facilities across sociodemographic characteristics, regions, and specific diseases between 2004 and 2018. The unmet need for treatment-seeking from public health facilities remained high at 60% in 2004 to 62% in 2018. However, the proportion of respondents who did not seek treatment has reduced 12% to 3% from 2004 to 2018. In states like Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal, the unmet need for treatment-seeking from public health facilities was more than 60% in 2018. For 2018, the quality of services at public health facilities was the main reason for showing a higher unmet need for treatment-seeking in the richer MPCE quintiles. On the other hand, the ailment not considered serious as the main reason for the unmet need for treatment-seeking from any sources has got nearly doubled from 36% in 2004 to 71% in 2018. This study concludes that improving the availability of various kinds of services at public health facilities should be a priority under India's universal health coverage program. Education plays a vital role in treatment-seeking. Thus, there is an urgent need for increasing awareness among people for treatment-seeking. Ensuring a minimum quality of health care services and reducing long waiting timing would reduce the apathy to receive services from the public health facilities.

Inequities in curative health-care utilization among the adult population (20–59 years) in India: A comparative analysis of NSS 71st (2014) and 75th (2017–18) rounds

ObjectiveThe study attempts (a) to compute the degree of socio-economic inequity in health care utilization and (b) to decompose and analyze the drivers of socio-economic inequity in health care utilization among adults (20–59 years) in India during the periods 2014 and 2017–18.Data sourceThe analysis has been done by using the unit level data of Social Consumption: Health (Schedule number 25.0), of National sample Survey (NSS), corresponding to the 71st and 75th rounds.MethodsOdds ratios were computed through logistic regression analysis to examine the effect of the socio-economic status on the health seeking behaviour of the ailing adult population in India. Concentration Indices (CIs) were calculated to quantify the magnitude of socio-economic inequity in health care utilization. Further, the CIs were decomposed to find out the share of the major contributory factors in the overall inequity.ResultsThe regression results revealed that socio-economic status continues to show a strong association with treatment seeking behavior among the adults in India. The positive estimates of CIs across both the rounds of NSS suggested that health care utilization among the adults continues to be concentrated within the higher socio-economic status, although the magnitude of inequity in health care utilization has shrunk from 0.0336 in 2014 to 0.0230 in 2017–18. However, the relative contribution of poor economic status to the overall explained inequities in health care utilisation observed a rise in its share from 31% in 2014 to 45% in 2017–18.ConclusionTo reduce inequities in health care utilization, policies should address issues related to both supply and demand sides. Revamping the public health infrastructure is the foremost necessary condition from the supply side to ensure equitable health care access to the poor. Therefore, it is warranted that India ramps up investments and raises the budgetary allocation in the health care infrastructure and human resources, much beyond the current spending of 1.28% of its GDP as public expenditure on health. Further, to reduce the existing socio-economic inequities from the demand side, there is an urgent need to strengthen the redistributive mechanisms by tightening the various social security networks through efficient targeting and broadening the outreach capacity to the vulnerable and marginalized sections of the population.

Demographic Dividend and Youth Unemployment: Evidence from the Southern States of India

The expansion of employment and reduction of unemployment that ensures adequate livelihood security and decent conditions of work ought to be the bottom line in the pursuit of economic development in a country like India. Today, the Indian economy has been experiencing demographic transition and it is gaining economically from the changing age structure. Among the age structure, the age from 15 to 29 is an important human resource for the economic development of any other nation. Current predictions suggest a steady increase in the youth population to 464 million by 2021 and finally a decline to 458 million by 2026. By 2020, India is set to become the world’s youngest country with 64 percent of its population in the working-age group. The youth population comprises 35 percent of the urban population and 32 percent of the rural population, at the same time they are facing development challenges like unemployment, poverty, inequality, and discrimination, etc., these issues are affecting the lives of billions of youth population. According to 2011 Census 84.5 million young people in India live below the poverty line, which is the highest rate worldwide, (44.2 percent of the total youth population) at the same time there is 44 million Indian youth who are undernourished, which constitutes 23 percent of the youth population in India. The work participation rate among young people has been declining from 55.5 percent in 1983 to 46.0 percent in 2004-2005. According to the OECD Economic Survey India, 2017 reported that Over 30% of youth aged 15-29 in India are not in employment, education or training. This is more than double the OECD average and almost three times that of China. In this context, this paper examines the Demographic dividend, Youth Employment, and Unemployment: Evidence from the Southern States of India from 1981 to 2011. The study is carried out with two specific objectives: (1) to understand the level and trends of employment and unemployment among youth in India and selected states and (2) to comprehend the relation of youth employment and unemployment with population structure and economic development in India and selected states. The present paper is based on various Census of India reports from 1981 to 2011, National Sample Survey rounds on Employment and Unemployment and secondary sources from RBI and National Commission of Population Projection on India and States from 2001 to 2026 by the Registrar General of India.

Group-based educational inequalities in India: Have major education policy interventions been effective?

Despite seven decades of policy thrust, group-based educational inequalities persist in India. The tenacious social group-based stratification often proves to be a hurdle for educational participation policies to be effectively rolled out. Given these realities, this study reviews all major national education policy interventions since t 1950s. Using four rounds of National Sample Survey (NSS) data, we analysed the pattern of educational attainments in terms of Average Years of Schooling (AYS) and educational inequalities in India for the period 1994-2012. Three indices of inequality - Gini, Theil’s enttropy and Atkinson - have been constructed to study inequality by gender, place of residence and social groups. . We also empirically estimated the determinants of educational attainments in India by using OLS and Tobit Models. Further using the Oaxaca-Blinder Decomposition technique, we analysed the educational attainment gaps between groups. The study concludes that policy interventions have done little to reduce the group-based educational attainment gap and it’s time to place improved focus on secondary and higher education while continuing the efforts in primary education.

‘Availability’ and/or ‘Affordability’:What matters in household energy access in India?

While access to cleaner fuel is a sustainable development goal, the transition from traditional to modern fuel is yet to be achieved in India. This paper estimates fuel costs associated with such transitions and analyses the determinants of access to electricity for lighting and Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG) for cooking. State-level regression models based on data from 61st (2004–05), 68th (2011–12) and 71st (2014) rounds of National Sample Survey are used. While energy expenditures are found to be comparable for kerosene and electricity for lighting, it increases 3.6–8.8-fold for transition to LPG from traditional fuel. Availability is important for greater uptake of electricity i.e. higher rate of electrification helps, but the same is not true for LPG. While untargeted tariff-subsidy leads to significant budgetary pressure, it doesn't affect the access. States with higher income and literacy rate/women empowerment have greater access to LPG and electricity. This shows while Indian energy policies always focused on removal of supply-side barriers through infrastructure creation, removal of first cost barrier and subsidizing tariff, a more meaningful way to ensure access is perhaps to integrate energy policies within the broader arena of comprehensive development policies to ensure improvement in socio-economic indicators.

A geospatial analysis of noncommunicable disease (NCD) burden in Indian agro-climatic and political regions

To examine the burden of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) in the Indian agro-climatic and political regions. Data from two rounds of National Sample Survey (NSS) 68th (2011–12) and 71st (2014) was used to estimate the subnational spatial heterogeneity of NCD burden across 87 agro-climatic and political regions in India. Quantile maps, local Moran’s I, LISA cluster and significance maps were generated. Results show a high spatial heterogeneity in disease burden across the agro-climatic regions. Moran’s I scatterplot depict a significantly high level of regional dependence (Moran’s I = 0.558) of NCDs with larger concentration of disease in southern states like Kerala (northern and southern), Tamil Nadu (inland, coastal, and northern-coastal), Karnataka (inland, coastal and Ghats) and Pondicherry. The proportion of the elderly population, those belonging to urban areas, widowed/divorced/separated population, high per capita alcohol and tobacco consumption were more likely to affect the prevalence of NCDs. Findings call for an immediate programmatic attention at the subnational level due to significantly high regional dependence of NCDs. Policies and programme should focus on strengthening the implementation of existing policies with a special focus on geriatric population to combat the disease burden.

Out-of-pocket expenditure and catastrophic health spending on maternal care in public and private health centres in India: a comparative study of pre and post national health mission period

BackgroundThe National Health Mission (NHM), one of the largest publicly funded maternal health programs worldwide was initiated in 2005 to reduce maternal, neo-natal and infant mortality and out-of-pocket expenditure (OOPE) on maternal care in India. Though evidence suggests improvement in maternal and child health, little is known on the change in OOPE and catastrophic health spending (CHS) since the launch of NHM.AimThe aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive estimate of OOPE and CHS on maternal care by public and private health providers in pre and post NHM periods.Data and methodThe unit data from the 60th and 71st rounds of National Sample Survey (NSS) is used in the analyses. Descriptive statistics is used to understand the differentials in OOPE and CHS. The CHS is estimated based on capacity to pay, derived from household consumption expenditure, the subsistence expenditure (based on state specific poverty line) and household OOPE on maternal care. Data of both rounds are pooled to understand the impact of NHM on OOPE and CHS. The log-linear regression model and the logit regression models adjusted for state fixed effect, clustering and socio-economic and demographic correlates are used in the analyses.ResultsWomen availing themselves of ante natal, natal and post natal care (all three maternal care services) from public health centres have increased from 11% in 2004 to 31% by 2014 while that from private health centres had increased from 12% to 20% during the same period. The mean OOPE on all three maternal care services from public health centres was US$60 in pre-NHM and US$86 in post-NHM periods while that from private health center was US$170 and US$300 during the same period. Controlling for socioeconomic and demographic correlates, the OOPE on delivery care from public health center had not shown any significant increase in post NHM period. The OOPE on delivery care in private health center had increased by 5.6 times compared to that from public health centers in pre NHM period. Economic well-being of the households and educational attainment of women is positively and significantly associated with OOPE, linking OOPE and ability to pay. The extent of CHS on all three maternal care from public health centers had declined from 56% in pre NHM period to 29% in post NHM period while that from private health centres had declined from 56% to 47% during the same period. The odds of incurring CHS on institutional delivery in public health centers (OR .03, 95% CI 0.02, 06) and maternal care (OR 0.06, 95% CI 0.04, 0.07) suggest decline in CHS in the post NHM period. Women delivering in private health centres, residing in rural areas and poor households are more likely to face CHS on maternal care.ConclusionNHM has been successful in increasing maternal care and reducing the catastrophic health spending in public health centers. Regulating private health centres and continuing cash incentive under NHM is recommended.

Regular Salaried Employment Opportunities in India: Nature, Access and Inclusiveness

Decent work for poverty reduction and overall well-being has long been recognised by International Labour Organisation (ILO). However, ensuring it still remains a challenge in several countries across the globe. Treating regular employment as a form of decent work may be a misconception as a large number of regular salaried employment opportunities are devoid of any tenurial and social security benefits to workers, making them vulnerable, which is a crucial indicator of ILO’s notion of decent employment. Based on unit record data of large rounds of National Sample Survey on Employment and Unemployment, this paper disaggregates regular employment across public, private and informal enterprises and finds unequal access to quality employment opportunities to various socio-religious groups. It attempts to understand determinants of access to regular wage employment opportunities with a focus on quality jobs. Finally, the paper suggests measures to improve the availability and access to quality jobs to workers and promote inclusiveness in such job opportunities with a special focus on marginalised social groups in India.

Emerging trends and patterns of self-reported morbidity in India: Evidence from three rounds of national sample survey

BackgroundIndia is rapidly undergoing an epidemiological transition with a sudden change in the disease profile of its population. It is important to understand the changing nature of the burden of disease across the states of India for adequate policy intervention.MethodsWe analyzed the trend and pattern of self-reported morbidity across states of India using three rounds of (52nd, 60th and 71st) National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) data. Descriptive analysis was carried out to understand the prevalence of self-reported morbidity variation over a period of two decades (1995-2014) and multivariate analysis was performed to identify the significant determinants of various types of self-reported morbidities.ResultsThe results indicated an increasing trend of infectious disease, Cardio Vascular Diseases (CVDs) and Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) over the last two decades (1995-2014). CVDs increased by a whopping eight-fold and the NCDs increased by three times during this period. A higher prevalence of self-reported morbidity was observed among the elderly and female, particularly in the urban locality. The growing incidence of CVDs and NCDs, especially among the elderly were reported from Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Punjab and West Bengal.ConclusionsThe already constrained public health system in India is likely to face serious challenges with a double burden of communicable and non-communicable diseases. An effective and responsive public health system needs to be in place to make health care services available for NCDs and CVDs at the primary level. In order to ameliorate caregiving, the involvement of family will be critical. Informing the people inculcate healthy habits may be an effective health promotion measure.

Indian Labour Markets and Returns to Education

The present study is an attempt to examine the trends in returns to education in the context of long-term economic growth in India during 1983 to 2009–2010. It outlines various forms of inequality issues prevalent in the Indian labour markets for male as well as female workers in the rural and the urban areas as regular and casual workers. The unit level data from six rounds of National Sample Survey during 1983, 1987–1988, 1993–1994, 1999–2000, 2004–2005 and 2009–2010 were used for this study. The Mincer wage function was estimated separately for male and female workers and also for regular and casual workers. To account for sample selection bias, the Heckman two-step procedure was used. The results reveal that returns to education were higher in casual labour market for rural and urban male workers till some intermediate levels. For female workers, the returns to education have not changed much in both the rural and the urban areas, with an increase in level of education over time. However, the returns to education have improved for regular workers, indicating towards higher wages for improved education over time, as a result of increased employment opportunities, especially in the tertiary sector, for better educated in India during the last decade of relatively faster economic growth.

Wage Differences by Caste and Religion in India

This paper attempts to systematically look at the differences in wages earned between male workers belonging to various caste and religious identities in India, and how that has changed over time. I use data from seven different rounds of National Sample Survey (NSS) to investigate the wage differences that accrue due to different caste and religious identities. I find that Indian Muslim men earn slightly lower wages compared to their upper-caste Hindu counterparts, and this difference has grown slightly over the period of 1983 to 2011. However, this difference is not uniform across all location, education and worker categories. While there are hardly any differences in wages earned between Muslim workers and upper-caste Hindu workers for unskilled labourers, for more educated salaried workers, the differences are high especially in urban areas. A similar pattern emerges for workers of lower-castes, although their earnings in many cases are even lower than Muslim workers. Lack of entrepreneurship among the urban Muslims and lower-caste Hindus in the formal sector might be responsible for their plights. Policies that encourage skill development and development of entrepreneurship among Muslims and especially lower-caste Hindus in the formal sector will help alleviating the conditions of these demographic groups.

India’s Declining Calorie Intake: Development or Distress?

The analysis of food consumption data from successive rounds of the National Sample Survey (NSS), from 1993–1994 to 2009–2010, has shown that through the greater part of the post-liberalisation era India has seen a steadily declining level of calorie intake. This phenomenon is often attributed to increasing prosperity, declining morbidity and technological advancements that reduce hard manual labour and, hence, human energy requirement. The validity of this interpretation, however, becomes doubtful with the latest NSS data of 2011–2012 which have shown a noticeable increase of calorie intake. Using data from these NSS rounds, we attempt to make direct estimates of food consumption by different social sections in India. Our findings on declining calorie intakes, even among the poor who already have a very low calorie intake, strongly point towards increasing levels of undernourishment because of reduced access to food for a majority of people. We argue that the redistributive policies that have led to an improvement in food and calorie intake in 2011–2012 must be strengthened rather than undermined.

Analyzing “jobless growth” in post-liberalisation India: a decomposition approach

There has been a growing concern about “jobless growth” in the Indian economy as a major problem to the significant rise in GDP. This paper comprehensively examines India’s economic growth and employment during the different National Sample Survey (NSS) rounds, with a special reference to the service sector, the main growth engine for Indian economy over the past two decades. This paper tries to examine the factors accounting for the growth in the Indian economy through the labour market and workforce behaviour. It focuses on growth decomposition to account for the factors driving growth of the Indian economy, and it looks to decompose growth across the different sectors of the economy. The methodology used here is Shapley (in: Contributions to the Theory of Games,1953) decomposition. The periods of analysis are the different rounds of NSS. The three spells of growth considered are 1993/1994 to 1999/2000, 1999/2000 to 2004/05 and 2004/05 to 2009/10. The paper reveals an interesting fact that the main cause of growth in per capita GDP in post-liberalisation India is a massive growth in output per worker across all sectors over the three growth spells. There has been negative growth associated with employment rate, implying jobless growth in India. The demographic component effect on growth has been mostly positive. At the sectoral level, the industrial and specialised service sectors show fairly positive growth in terms of employment rate, though small, the negative contribution of employment in agriculture is so large that it overshadows the positive effect of these sectors, leading to huge negative contribution to the changes in the employment rate, defining jobless growth in India.

Welfare Comparisons with Multidimensional Well-Being Indicators: An Indian Illustration

Problem of making welfare comparisons between populations with multidimensional discrete well-being indicators are well known. Application of a weighting scheme remains a convenient alternative for aggregating across dimensions but not without the limitation of subjectivity in the principle of weighting. Further dichotomous well-being indicators pose another complexity in comparison as regard counting ‘how many’ and ‘which ones’ at the same time. This paper attempts a welfare comparison of population where only ordinal information is available at the micro level in terms of multi-dimensional discrete well-being indicators. This does not involve any assumption either regarding strength of preference for each dimension or regarding the desirability of changes between levels within or across dimensions or the complementarities/substitutability between the dimensions. To carry out such a comparison, we adopt the concept of multidimensional first order dominance that enables us to make comparison across time and between populations based on a series of binary ordinal welfare indicators. This concept is applied to the data on Household basic amenities obtained in the National Sample Survey rounds and comparison is made across Indian states. Such a comparison offers a contrast to the welfare comparison made in terms of the deprivation prevalence across dimensions as well as its temporal changes.

Determinants of Large City Slum Incidence in India: A Cross-Sectional Study

Roughly 1.37 crore households, or 17.4% of urban Indian households lived in slums in 2011. India‟s current policies and programmes are not enough to improve slum conditions or stop proliferation of slums. This phenomenon poses serious questions to Indian economic researchers and policy makers. By considering India‟s 52 large urban agglomerations, this paper investigates the relevant city specific economic determinants of city slum incidence (measured by the ratio of city slum population to total city population). In addition, the paper also tries to identify the cities with the best record in trying to improve the living condition of slum dwellers in India. Besides using city level data, the study uses three rounds of National Sample Survey (NSS) unit level data on consumption expenditure, employment and unemployment, and particulars of slums. Using OLS regression analysis, the empirical results show that the level of urban agglomeration, per capita income, per capita consumption expenditure, level of poverty, employment and unemployment situation negatively impact on city slum incidence. The results of Borda ranking show that Aurangabad, Hyderabad, Jodhpur, Bangalore, and Hubli-Dharwad rank high among other cities in regard to availability of quality of public services and better general conditions in the slum. Finally, the paper suggests that the problem of slum should be analysed in a macro or overall perspective besides micro level as the stage of development of a country has a direct bearing on proliferation of slums.

The Impact of NREGS on Urbanization in India

This paper tests the impact of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) on rural-urban migration and urban unemployment in India. We use the Harris-Todaro framework to analyze labor market outcomes of this policy intervention. Using data from two rounds of National Sample Survey, we exploit quasi experiment setting where the NREGS was launched in phases across districts, over time. Results show that the NREGS reduced rural-urban migration and urban unemployment in India. Results are heterogeneous as this job scheme reduced migration for employment and marriage, but not for education. It lowered migration of unskilled labor but did not affect skilled labor.

IS HEALTH STATUS OF ELDERLY WORSENING IN INDIA? A COMPARISON OF SUCCESSIVE ROUNDS OF NATIONAL SAMPLE SURVEY DATA

The increasing greying of India's population raises concerns about the welfare and health status of the aged. One important source of information of health status of the elderly is the National Sample Survey Rounds on Morbidity and Health Care Expenditure. Using unit-level data for 1995-96 and 2004, this paper examines changes in reported health status of the elderly in India and analyses their relationship with living arrangements and extent of economic dependency. It appears that even after controlling for factors like caste, education, age, economic status and place of residence, there has been a deterioration in self-perceived current health status of the elderly. The paper argues that, although there have been changes in the economic condition and traditional living arrangements--with a decline in co-residential arrangements--this is not enough to explain the decline in reported health status and calls for a closer look at narratives of neglect being voiced in developing countries.