Gender Inequality in Education and Kinship Norms in India

ABSTRACT

Women’s schooling attainment in India continues to lag considerably behind that of men. This paper uses nationally representative district-level data from the 2007–8 District Level Household and Facility Survey (DLHS-3), Indicus Analytics, and the 2011–12 Indian Human Development Survey-II (IHDS-II) to examine the role of socioeconomic and cultural factors in influencing gender differentials in schooling. The results provide quantitative evidence of the role of different economic and sociocultural factors on gender disparities in education. The empirical results show that economic development is an important factor in narrowing gender gaps in education, with wealthier districts more likely to educate girls than poorer districts. However, the norm of patrilocal exogamy, where wives migrate to co-reside with their husband’s kin, is associated with worse outcomes for women’s schooling relative to men’s schooling; and, in keeping with anthropological research, gender-differentiated inequities in education are more pronounced in Northern India.

KEYWORDS:

• Education
• gender differences
• economics of the family

JEL Codes:

• O1
• J16

Notes

1 These were Sikkim, Arunachal, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, Daman and Diu, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, and Lakshadweep.

2 In one Rajasthani district, Dausa, the gap between men’s and women’s education rates is 49.53 percent.

3 We note that Dubey and Verschoor (2007) show that poverty is associated with better, not worse, sex ratios in India and argue that the adverse sex ratios are mainly to do with women’s greater postnatal mortality.

4 North is defined as all districts in the states of Jammu and Kashmir, Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan. West is comprised of districts in the states of Gujarat and Maharashtra. South includes districts in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Goa, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Puducherry. And finally, East includes districts in the states of Bihar, Assam, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Orissa, and Chhattisgarh.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anu Rammohan

Anu Rammohan is Professor of Economics at the University of Western Australia. Her recent research has focused on: (i) intrahousehold distribution of health and education in developing countries, and its implications for the household’s children, women, and the elderly; and (ii) food and nutritional security in rural areas of developing countries.

Patrick Vu

Patrick Vu is a graduate student in economics at Oxford University. His research interests are the economics of development and the economics of education. He completed his undergraduate with First Class Honours at the University of Western Australia, with majors in economics, finance, and music. Prior to beginning his graduate studies, he worked for several years as an economist at the Reserve Bank of Australia.