Inequality of Opportunity in Educational Achievement in India: Implications of Earning distribution and Affirmative Action
01 Dec 2019-Iss: 4, pp 116-132
TL;DR: Das et al. as mentioned in this paper provided a quantifiable measure of the distributional content of education and its implications on earnings distribution by gender across different groups of people by using survey data in India.
Abstract: Panchanan Das - Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, University of Calcutta (India).Address: University of Calcutta, 56A, B. T. Road, Kolkata 700050. E-mail: panchanandaswbes@gmail.comThe objective of this study is to provide a quantifiable measure of the distributional content of education and its implications on earnings distribution by gender across different groups of people by using survey data in India. We analyze educational disparities among the children with age up to 14 years by gender, and household specific characters with Indian data. The study observes that, in the rural economy, the girls have less access to full time education than boys. In the urban region, on the other hand, the access to full time education at primary level is more for girls than for boys. The estimated coverage is less in the rural areas than in urban areas. The HOI is more among the urban children than among the rural children. Parent’s education has the highest contribution to inequality of opportunity to full time education at primary or upper primary level.
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used two rounds of Indian National Family Health Surveys and concepts of Inequality of Opportunity and Human Opportunity Indices to measure inequality arising out of unequal access to full immunization and minimum nutrition for Indian children.
Abstract: A child’s access to health care and minimum nutrition should not depend on circumstances such as caste, religion, gender, place of birth, or other parental characteristics, which are beyond the control of a child. This paper uses two rounds of Indian National Family Health Surveys and concepts of Inequality of Opportunity and Human Opportunity Indices to measure inequality arising out of unequal access to full immunization and minimum nutrition for Indian children. The results suggest overall high level of inequality of opportunity with substantial geographical variations. Changes in inequality of opportunity in the two services during 1992-93 to 2005-06 were mixed with some geographical regions outperforming others. The findings also call for substantial policy revisions if the goal of universal access to full immunization and minimum nutrition has to be achieved.
23 citations
TL;DR: In this paper , the authors quantify discrimination in getting jobs and earnings associated with employment in the labour market in India and analyse how much of inequality in employment and wage is due to differences in gender, caste, and religion during the high growth regime under neoliberal reform.
Abstract: This study aims to quantify discrimination in getting jobs and earnings associated with employment in the labour market in India and analyse how much of inequality in employment and wage is due to differences in gender, caste, and religion during the high growth regime under neoliberal reform. In measuring discrimination, we use ex-ante approach of inequality of opportunity in which there is equality of opportunity in employment and earning if all individuals face the same set of opportunities regardless of their circumstances. We define employment discrimination as the lack of access to good quality job because of differences in gender, caste and religion. This study observes that job discrimination is significantly high in wage employment than in self-employment both in the rural and urban economy. While in wage employment job discrimination declined, in self-employment it increased. Discrimination against women has been increasing with the opening of new type of jobs which are primarily temporary in nature. Wage discrimination is highly associated with employment discrimination.
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TL;DR: Decomposition techniques are used in many fields of economics to help disentangle and quantify the impact of various causal factors as discussed by the authors, and their use is particularly widespread in studies of poverty and inequality.
Abstract: Decomposition techniques are used in many fields of economics to help disentangle and quantify the impact of various causal factors. Their use is particularly widespread in studies of poverty and inequality. In poverty analysis, most practitioners now employ decomposable poverty measures—especially the Foster et al. [10] family of indices—which enable the overall level of poverty to be allocated among subgroups of the population, such as those defined by geographical region, household composition, labour market characteristics or education level. Recent examples include Grootaert [11], Szekely [26], Thorbecke and Jung [28]. Other dynamic decomposition procedures are used to examine how economic growth contributes to a reduction in poverty over time, and to assess the extent to which the impact of growth is reinforced, or attenuated, by changes in income inequality: see for example, Ravallion and Huppi [20], Datt and Ravallion [6] and Tsui [29]. In the context of income inequality, decomposition techniques enable researchers to distinguish the “between-group” effect due to differences in average incomes across subgroups (males and females, say), from the “within-group” effect due to inequality within the population subgroups. Decomposition techniques have also been developed in order to measure the importance of components of income such as earnings or transfer payments.
898 citations
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TL;DR: This paper provided new measures of human capital inequality for a broad panel of countries, taking attainment levels from Barro and Lee (2001) and compute Gini coefficients and the distribution of education by quintiles for 108 countries over five-year intervals from 1960 to 2000.
Abstract: This paper provides new measures of human capital inequality for a broad panel of countries. Taking attainment levels from Barro and Lee (2001), we compute Gini coefficients and the distribution of education by quintiles for 108 countries over five-year intervals from 1960 to 2000. Using this new cross-country data on human capital inequality two main conclusions are obtained. First, most countries in the world have tended to reduce the inequality in human capital distribution. Second, human capital inequality measures provide more robust results than income inequality measures in the estimation of standard growth and investment equations.
419 citations
TL;DR: Examination of changes in educational attainment between various social groups for a period of nearly 20 years to see whether educational inequalities have declined over time finds a declining gap between dalits, adivasis, and others in the odds of completing primary school and finds little improvement in inequality at the college level.
Abstract: Indian society suffers from substantial inequalities in education, employment, and income based on caste and ethnicity. Compensatory or positive discrimination policies reserve 15% of the seats in institutions of higher education and state and central government jobs for people of the lowest caste, the Scheduled Caste; 7.5% of the seats are reserved for the Scheduled Tribe. These programs have been strengthened by improved enforcement and increased funding in the 1990s. This positive discrimination has also generated popular backlash and on-the-ground sabotage of the programs. This paper examines the changes in educational attainment between various social groups for a period of nearly 20 years to see whether educational inequalities have declined over time. We use data from a large national sample survey of over 100,000 households for each of the four survey years—1983, 1987–1988, 1993–1994, and 1999–2000-andfocus on the educational attainment of children and young adults aged 6–29. Our results show a declining gap between dalits, adivasis, and others in the odds of completing primary school. Such improvement is not seen for Muslims, a minority group that does not benefit from affirmative action. We find little improvement in inequality at the college level. Further, we do not find evidence that upper-income groups, the so-called creamy layer of dalits and adivasis, disproportionately benefit from the affirmative action programs at the expense of their lower-income counterparts.
252 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors proposed two related measures of educational inequality: one for educational achievement and another for educational opportunity, based on the simple variance (or standard deviation) of test scores.
Abstract: This paper proposes two related measures of educational inequality: one for educational achievement and another for educational opportunity. The former is the simple variance (or standard deviation) of test scores. Its selection is informed by consideration of two measurement issues that have typically been overlooked in the literature: the implications of the standardization of test scores for inequality indices, and the possible sample selection biases arising from the Program of International Student Assessment (PISA) sampling frame. The measure of inequality of educational opportunity is given by the share of the variance in test scores that is explained by pre-determined circumstances. Both measures are computed for the 57 countries in which PISA surveys were conducted in 2006. Inequality of opportunity accounts for up to 35 percent of all disparities in educational achievement. It is greater in (most of) continental Europe and Latin America than in Asia, Scandinavia, and North America. It is uncorrelated with average educational achievement and only weakly negatively correlated with per capita gross domestic product. It correlates negatively with the share of spending in primary schooling, and positively with tracking in secondary schools.
193 citations
TL;DR: This paper proposed a reformulation of the definition of economic development, replacing the utilitarian measure of GDP per capita with a measure of the degree to which opportunities for income acquisition in a nation have been equalized.
Abstract: During the last third of the twentieth century, political philosophers actively debated about the content of distributive justice; the ruling ethical view of utilitarianism was challenged by various versions of equality of opportunities. Economists formulated several ways of modeling these ideas, focusing upon how individuals are placed with respect to opportunities for achieving various outcomes, and what compensation is due to individuals with truncated opportunities. After presenting a review of the main philosophical ideas (section 2), we turn to economic models (sections 3 and 4). We propose a reformulation of the definition of economic development, replacing the utilitarian measure of GDP per capita with a measure of the degree to which opportunities for income acquisition in a nation have been equalized. Finally, we discuss issues that the econometrician faces in measuring inequality of opportunity, briefly review the empirical literature (section 6), and conclude (section 7).
174 citations