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Household Headship and Academic Skills of Indian Children: A Special Focus on Gender Disparities

Sexe du chef de ménage et compétences scolaires des enfants indiens : une analyse des disparités entre sexe

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Abstract

Using multivariate analyses and reading, mathematics and writing scores of children (aged 8–11 years) from a nationally representative sample, we find that children from female headed households either perform better or similar, but never worse than those from male headed households. Also, household fixed effect analysis reveals no gender disparity in academic scores of children belonging to female headed households, a case not true for children from male headed households. We relate this finding to gender parity in educational expenditure on children in female headed households against gender disparity in the same in households headed by males. Based on our findings we also offer some policy suggestions.

Résumé

Les résultats de cet article, basés sur les scores obtenus en lecture, en mathématiques et en écriture par des enfants indiens (âgés de 8 à 11 ans) dans le cadre d’une enquête représentative au niveau national, et sur l’utilisation de méthodes d’analyses multivariées, montrent que les enfants appartenant à des ménages dirigés par des femmes ont des niveaux de performance soit meilleurs soit similaires, mais jamais inférieurs à ceux d’enfants appartenant à des ménages dirigés par des hommes. De plus, une analyse avec effets fixes ne révèle aucune différence selon le sexe dans les scores scolaires des enfants des ménages dont le chef est une femme, ce qui n’est pas le cas des enfants des ménages dont le chef est un homme. Ce résultat pourrait être la conséquence de dépenses scolaires égales pour les garçons et pour les filles dans les ménages dirigés par les femmes, ce qui ne serait pas le cas dans les ménages dirigés par les hommes. A partir de ces résultats, quelques implications en termes de politiques sont également suggérées.

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Notes

  1. India suffers from substantial gender based discrimination in schooling, health, nutrition, wages and labor force participation and access to physical and financial resources (World Bank 1991; Bhan 2001; Pande 2003; Borooah 2004; Mishra et al. 2004; Reilly and Datta 2005; Agrahari and Singh 2009).

  2. Similar tests were also used in PRATHAM’s survey, the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), 2005. The ASER results are based on a large sample of children but do not contain detailed information about their social background and parental characteristics.

  3. Castes in the Indian context are related to “Jatis” (and “upajatis” or subcastes) and “Varna”. The ancient Varna system divided the Hindu society into initially four, later five, distinct “Varnas” or castes that are mutually exclusive, hereditary, endogamous, and occupation specific. These castes are the Brahmins (priests), Kshatriyas (warriors), Vaisyas (traders and merchants), and Sudras (those engaged in menial jobs) and those doing the most despicable menial jobs — the Ati-Sudras, the former untouchables. However, the operative category that determines the contemporary social code is the “Jati”. Jatis are also castes (and share the basic characteristics of the Varna), with individuals of different jatis lying at different levels of development and welfare (Deshpande, 2000, 2001, p. 131). The Government of India has categorized the different “Jatis” into four categories—Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), Other Backward Classes (OBC) and Others (OC or upper castes).There has been considerable evidence of SCs and STs having suffered severe discrimination and atrocities on the hand of upper castes of Indian society. The Constitution of India abolished the practice of untouchability and prohibits any discrimination on the basis of caste. The Government of India imbibes the principle of social equality and implements affirmative policies in terms of positive discrimination (compensatory discrimination) favoring the lower castes (SC, ST and OBC) and categorizes the different Jatis into four caste categories, namely, SC, ST, Other Backward Classes (OBC), and Other Castes (OC). The social and economic condition of SC/STs has been historically poorest in India followed by OBCs whose conditions were poorer than the OCs (other castes or upper castes).

  4. At the first analytical level (the overall sample) we have three categories of household type, that is, male headed, married female headed and widowed female headed and the household type itself has been included as a categorical variable (with the above three categories) in the analysis; but at the second level, where we perform separate analyses on sub-samples by household types, we are combining the married female headed households with widowed female headed households to get the sample of female headed households. It would have been desirable here to conduct the analysis separately for married female headed households and widowed female headed households but the resulting sub-samples are small in size resulting in inadequate variation in the other factors in the subsamples and therefore don’t permit such separation.

  5. If we observe the average age of the household heads (Table 1), we find that the married female heads (38.2 years) are younger than the widowed female heads (53.4 years). Since, schooling in India has improved over time, the age difference between the married female heads and the widowed female heads might explain the higher educational level of married female heads compared to the widowed female heads.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful for valuable comments and suggestions from the conference participants at the annual meeting of Population Association of America (2012) at San Francisco. We also express our thanks to the two anonymous reviewers and the editor for comments and suggestions on earlier drafts. This article was written when Ashish Singh and Sarthak Gaurav were PhD candidates at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, India.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Development, Azim Premji University, Electronic City, Bangalore, 560100, India

    Ashish Singh

  2. Asia Research Centre, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London, WC2A2AE, UK

    Sarthak Gaurav

  3. Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Goregaon (E), Mumbai, 400065, India

    Upasak Das

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  1. Ashish Singh
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Correspondence to Ashish Singh.

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Singh, A., Gaurav, S. & Das, U. Household Headship and Academic Skills of Indian Children: A Special Focus on Gender Disparities . Eur J Population 29, 445–466 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-013-9288-3

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