Latika Chaudhary

Determinants of Primary Schooling in British India

Using a new historical data set on the availability of schools, I analyze why there was so little primary education in British India, where as late as 1911 there were fewer than three primary schools for every ten villages. The findings show that greater caste and religious diversity contributed to both low and misguided private spending. Indeed more diverse districts had fewer privately managed primary schools and a smaller ratio of primary to secondary schools. Given primary schools were correlated with subsequent literacy, local factors that disrupted primary school provision had important consequences for Indias limited achievement in basic education.

The labor market returns to a for-profit college education

A lengthy literature estimating the returns to education has largely ignored the for-profit sector. In this paper, we estimate the earnings gains to for-profit college attendance using restricted-access data from the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY97). Using an individual fixed effects estimation strategy that allows us to control for time-invariant unobservable characteristics of students, we find that students who enroll in associates degree programs in for-profit colleges experience earnings gains of about 10 percent relative to high school graduates with no college degree, conditional on employment. Since associates degree students attend for an average of 2.6 years, this translates to a 4 percent return per year of education in a for-profit college, slightly lower than estimates of returns for other sectors found in the literature.

Big BRICs, weak foundations: The beginning of public elementary education in Brazil, Russia, India, and China

Our paper provides a comparative perspective on the development of public primary education in four of the largest developing economies circa 1910: Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC). These four countries encompassed more than 50% of the worlds population in 1910, but remarkably few of their citizens attended any school by the early 20th century. We present new, comparable data on school inputs and outputs for BRIC drawn from contemporary surveys and government documents. Recent studies emphasize the importance of political decentralization, and relatively broad political voice for the early spread of public primary education in developed economies. We identify the former and the lack of the latter to be important in the context of BRIC, but we also outline how other factors such as factor endowments, colonialism, serfdom, and, especially, the characteristics of the political and economic elite help explain the low achievement levels of these four countries and the incredible amount of heterogeneity within each of them.

Land revenues, schools and literacy: a historical examination of public and private funding of education.

Despite the centralised nature of the fiscal system in colonial India, public education expenditures varied dramatically across regions with the western and southern provinces spending three to four times as much as the eastern provinces. A significant portion of the inter-regional difference was due to historical differences in land taxes, an important source of provincial revenues in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The large differences in public spending, however, did not produce comparable differences in enrolment rates or literacy in the colonial period. Nonetheless, public investments influenced the direction of school development and perhaps the long run trajectory of rural literacy.

The Labor Market Returns to a For-Profit College Education

A lengthy literature estimating the returns to education has largely ignored the for-profit sector. In this paper, we estimate the earnings gains to for-profit college attendance using restricted-access data from the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY97). Using an individual fixed effects estimation strategy that allows us to control for time-invariant unobservable characteristics of students, we find that students who enroll in associates degree programs in for-profit colleges experience earnings gains of about 10% relative to high school graduates with no college degree, conditional on employment. Since associates degree students attend for an average of 2.6 years, this translates to a 4% return per year of education in a for-profit college, slightly lower than estimates of returns for other sectors found in the literature.

Big BRICs, Weak Foundations: The Beginning of Public Elementary Education in Brazil, Russia, India, and China

Our paper provides a comparative perspective on the development of public primary education in four of the largest developing economies circa 1910: Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC). These four countries encompassed more than 50 percent of the worlds population in 1910, but remarkably few of their citizens attended any school by the early 20th century. We present new, comparable data on school inputs and outputs for BRIC drawn from contemporary surveys and government documents. Recent studies emphasize the importance of political decentralization, and relatively broad political voice for the early spread of public primary education in developed economies. We identify the former and the lack of the latter to be important in the context of BRIC, but we also outline how other factors such as factor endowments, colonialism, serfdom, and, especially, the characteristics of the political and economic elite help explain the low achievement levels of these four countries and the incredible amount of heterogeneity within each of them.

Engines of Growth: The Productivity Advance of Indian Railways, 1874–1912

Railways were integral to the development of the Indian economy before World War I. This article presents new estimates of total factor productivity (TFP) for railways from 1874 to 1912, which highlight the strong performance of this key industrial sector. Railway-industry TFP growth was substantial averaging 2.3 percent per year and generating a 2.7 percent social savings for the Indian economy. A combination of factors contributed to TFP growth including greater capacity utilization, technological change, and improvements in organization and governance. Railways had higher TFP growth than most sectors in India and compared favorably with TFP growth in other countries.

The state and scope of the economic history of developing regions

ABSTRACT This paper examines the state and scope of the study of economic history of developing regions, underlining the importance of knowledge of history for economic development. While the quality of the existing research on developing countries is impressive, the proportion of published research focusing on these regions is low. The dominance of economic history research on the North American and Western European success stories suggests the need for a forum for future research that contributes to our understanding of how institutions, path dependency, technological change and evolutionary processes shape economic growth in the developing parts of the world. Many valuable data sets and historical episodes relating to developing regions remain unexplored, and many interesting questions unanswered. This is exciting. Economic historians and other academics interested in the economic past have an opportunity to work to begin to unlock the complex reasons for differences in development, the factors behind economic disasters and the dynamics driving emerging success stories.

Caste, Colonialism and Schooling: Education in British India

This chapter reviews the development of enrollment and literacy in the colonial period with a focus on British India. Beginning in the 1850’s numerous acts were passed, various recommendations were made, and public and private funds were used to increase mass literacy. But, the outcome was disappointing — only 10 percent of the population could read and write by 1931. I identify potential factors responsible for this disappointing performance. Low public spending, a strong emphasis on secondary education and the presence of numerous castes and religions collectively appear to have constrained the development of human capital in India.

Railways in Colonial India: An Economic Achievement?

This chapter reviews the economic performance of Indian railways in particular the development and organization of the network, the trends in railway performance, the effects of ownership and regulatory policies, and the impact of railways on the Indian economy. We highlight four main points. First, the Government of India had a strong influence on railways from the beginning, but the Government’s role increased as railways were gradually nationalized over time. Second, the performance of Indian railways can be classified into two periods: pre-1920 and post-1920. There was a trend to higher output, productivity, and profits between 1850 and 1919, but after 1920 there was a leveling off. Fares and freight charges exhibit similar patterns, declining from 1850 to 1919 and then rising somewhat until 1940. Third, dividend guarantees were a key feature of the early era of private ownership. We argue that guarantees weakened incentives to lower costs, but they also encouraged rapid railway development. We review the relationship between Government of India ownership and operating efficiency. Perhaps surprisingly we find that state ownership reduced operational costs. Finally, there is clear evidence that railways increased market integration and raised incomes, but the magnitude of the effect and the precise mechanisms are still in doubt.