Geeta Kingdon

School Participation in Rural India

This paper presents an analysis of the determinant of school participation in rural north India, based on a recent household survey which includes detailed information on school characteristics. School participation especially among girls, responds to a wide range of variables, including parental education and motivation, social background, dependency ratios, work opportunities, village development, teacher posting , teacher regularity and mid-day meals. The remarkable lead achieved by the state of Himachal Pradesh is fully accounted for by these variables. School quality matters, but it is not related in a simply way to specific inputs.

The Millennium Development Goals: a cross-sectoral analysis and principles for goal setting after 2015

Bringing together analysis across different sectors, we review the implementation and achievements of the MDGs to date to identify cross cutting strengths and weaknesses as a basis for considering how they might be developed or replaced after 2015. Working from this and a definition of development as a dynamic process involving sustainable and equitable access to improved wellbeing, five interwoven guiding principles are proposed for a post 2015 development project: holism, equity, sustainability, ownership, and global obligation. These principles and their possible implications in application are expanded and explored. The paper concludes with an illustrative discussion of how these principles might be applied in the health sector.

Does the labour market explain lower female schooling in India

Labour market discrimination against women and parental discrimination against daughters are two of the most commonly cited explanations of the gender gap in education in developing countries. This study empirically tests the labour market explanation for India using household survey data collected in urban Uttar Pradesh in 1995. It estimates workforce participation functions and selectivity-corrected earnings fluctuations, and calculates the rates of return to education for the two sexes. Using the Blinder-Oaxaca method, the gross gender difference in earnings is decomposed into the part that is explained by men and womens differential characteristics and the part that is due to labour market discrimination. The results reveal that there is substantial omitted family background bias in the estimates of returns and that, contrary to received wisdom, the rates of returns to education rise by education level. The analysis suggests that, as well as overall labour girls face significantly lower economic rates of returns to education than boys.

Subjective well-being poverty versus income poverty and capabilities poverty

Abstract The conventional approach of economists to the measurement of poverty is to use measures of income or consumption. This has been challenged by those who favour broader criteria, such as fulfilment of ‘basic needs’ and the ‘capabilities’ to be and to do things of intrinsic worth. This paper asks: to what extent are these different concepts measurable, to what extent are they competing or complementary, and is it possible for them to be accommodated within an encompassing framework? We conclude that it is possible to view subjective well-being as an encompassing concept, which permits us to quantify the relevance and importance of the other approaches and of their component variables. Any attempt to define poverty involves a value judgment as to what constitutes a good quality of life or a bad one. We argue that an approach which examines the individuals own perception of well-being is less imperfect, or more quantifiable, or both, as a guide to forming that value judgement than are the other potential approaches. The argument is illustrated using a South African household survey.

Education and Women's Labour Market Outcomes in India

In this paper, we pose the question: to what extent is education responsible for the differential labour market outcomes of women and men in urban India? In particular, we investigate the extent to which education contributes to womens observed lower labour force participation and earnings than men, and whether any contribution of education to the gender wage differential is explained by men and womens differential educational endowments or by labour market discrimination. Our findings suggest that women do suffer high levels of wage discrimination in the Indian urban labour market, but that education contributes little to this discrimination: the wage-disadvantage effect of womens lower years of education than men is entirely offset by the wage-advantage effect of womens higher returns to education than mens. The data also indicate that, for both men and women, returns to education rise with education level, confirming the findings of other recent educational rate of return studies in India and elsewhere.

Gender and household education expenditure in Pakistan

Pakistan has very large gender gaps in educational outcomes. One explanation could be that girls receive lower educational expenditure allocations than boys within the household, but this has never convincingly been tested. This article investigates whether the intra-household allocation of educational expenditure in Pakistan favours males over females. It also explores two different explanations for the failure of the extant ‘Engel curve’ studies to detect gender-differentiated treatment in education even where gender bias is strongly expected. Using individual level data from the latest household survey from Pakistan, we posit two potential channels of gender bias: bias in the decision whether to enrol/keep sons and daughters in school, and bias in the decision of education expenditure conditional on enrolling both sons and daughters in school. In middle and secondary school ages, evidence points to significant pro-male biases in both the enrolment decision as well as the decision of how much to spend conditional on enrolment. However, in the primary school age-group, only the former channel of bias applies. Results suggest that the observed strong gender difference in education expenditure is a within rather than an across household phenomenon.

The Changing Pattern of Wage Returns to Education and its Implications

It is commonly believed that labour-market returns to education are highest for the primary level of education and lower for subsequent levels. Recent evidence reviewed in this article suggests that the pattern is changing. The causes of such changes, and their implications for both education and labour-market policy, are explored.

How Flexible are Wages in Response to Local Unemployment in South Africa

It is commonly claimed that the South African labor market is unusually inflexible owing to the strength of the countrys unions and the system of centralized collective bargaining. One sign of labor market inflexibility is low responsiveness of wages to local unemployment. Analyzing data from the South African Living Standards Survey, the authors find that the elasticity of wages with respect to local unemployment rates in South Africa in 1993 was about-0.1. The similarity of this elasticity to that found in other countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, is surprising given South Africas national unemployment rate of over 30%. The wage curve elasticity persists over a much wider range of unemployment rates in South Africa than in OECD countries, implying that unemployment in South Africa can have a large impact on wages.

South African economic policy under democracy

South Africa experienced a momentous change of government from the Apartheid regime to its first democratic government in 1994. This book provides an up-to-date and comprehensive assessment of South Africas economic policies and performance under democracy. The book includes a stand-alone introduction and economic overview, as well as chapters on growth, monetary and exchange rate policy and fiscal policy, on capital flows and trade policy, on investment and industrial and competition policy, on the effect of AIDs in the macroeconomy, and on unemployment, education and inequality and poverty. Each chapter, and the overview chapter in particular, also addresses prospects for the future. Contributors to this volume - Tania Ajam (AFREC and Financial and Fiscal Commission of South Africa) Janine Aron (University of Oxford) Servaas van der Berg (University of Stellenbosch) Anthony Black (University of Cape Town) Rashad Cassim (Statistics South Africa) Lawrence Edwards (University of Cape Town) Linette Ellis (University of Stellenbosch) Dirk Ernst van Seventer (TIPS, South Africa) Johannes W. Fedderke (University of Cape Town) Brian Kahn (South African Reserve Bank) Geeta Kingdon (University of London) John Knight (University of Oxford) Jonathan Leape (London School of Economics) Murray Leibbrandt (University of Cape Town) John Muellbauer (University of Oxford) Stan Du Plessis (University of Stellenbosch) Simon Roberts (Competition Commission of South Africa) Ben Smit (University of Stellenbosch) Lynne Thomas (London School of Economics) Christopher Woolard (University of Cape Town) Ingrid Woolard (University of Cape Town)

Do Returns to Education Matter to Schooling Participation? Evidence from India

While it might be expected that demand for schooling will depend positively on the economic returns to education (ER) in the local labor market, in fact there is theoretical ambiguity about the sign of the schooling–ER relationship when households are liquidity‐constrained. Whether the relationship is positive or negative depends on which effect dominates – the positive substitution effect of an increase in ER on years of education, or the negative income effect. For India, we find a positive relationship between the rate of return to education for adults in the local labor market and school attainment of girls and non‐poor boys. The size of the effect of ER on years of education acquired is large for some groups. However, for poor boys the negative income effect dominates the positive substitution effect. Thus, while improved economic incentives for acquiring education have a positive impact on educational attainment of girls and non‐poor boys, they worsen the educational attainment of poor boys. Policy implications are discussed.