Poverty and school enrolment : a study of two provinces in India

Abstract

This study uses Indian data from Living Standard Measurement Survey (LSMS) collected in 1997-98 to investigate the impact of poverty on child schooling and child work in the two states of India, namely, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Unlike other existing studies on this theme, this paper uses different measures to capture poverty. The paper uses the predicted measures of income and expenditure, and transitory income, and studies the impact of each measure on schooling. Household assets, which are important forms of household wealth, and include household ownership of land and durables like bicycle and sewing machine, have been factored into in this study. The study then predicts child wages using the Heckman's sample selection method and studies the impact of child wages on enrolment controlling for all other household's socio-economic characteristics. The paper also looks at the gender differences that persist in child schooling and the impact of child labour on schooling decisions in the given sample. The results indicate that the child school enrolment is positively related to household wealth. The ownership of land tends to have a greater impact on the child school enrolment than the income and expenditure measures. Transitory income has a positive effect and is significant for schooling of the girl child. Household's ownership of land tends to have a bigger impact on both girls' and boys' school enrolment as compared to the other measures. On the whole, it caa be seen that probabilities of boys attending school are higher than the probability for girls. Similar results are obtained when child wages are included in the analysis. A positive relation between child wages and child schooling are observed for both boys and girls. The findings, apart from the other implications, also point to the imperative of promoting a culture of equality between me genders, which advocates equality in educational opportunities, irrespective of the gender.

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