Getting a Child through Secondary School and to College in India

Abstract

In the classic formulations of social capital theory, families employ their social capital resources to enhance other capitals, in particular their human capital investments. Social capital would seem to be especially important in the case of India where, in recent years, higher education has been under considerable stress with rising educational demand, inadequate supply, and little parental experience to guide their children’s transition through the education system. We use the 2005 and 2012 waves of the nationally representative India Human Development Survey (IHDS) to show how relatively high status connections advantage some families’ chances of their children reaching educational milestones such as secondary school completion and college entry. The 2005 IHDS survey measure of a household’s formal sector contacts in education, government, and health predicts their children’s educational achievements by the second wave, seven years later, controlling for households’ and children’s initial backgrounds.

Modernization and Household Composition in India, 1983–2009

“…Living arrangements in India have since emerged at a crucial intersection in the study of demography, gender inequality, and intergenerational relationships (Dyson and Moore 1983;Das Gupta 1995;Agarwal 1997;Mookerjee 2019). A growing literature shows that household composition (e.g., whether a young woman resides with her mother-in-law, or whether aging parents are cared for by coresiding children) is a key determinant of everyday processes that have far-reaching sociodemographic consequences-whether in terms of women's autonomy and reproductive health (Jejeebhoy and Sathar 2001;Bloom, Wypij, and Das Gupta 2001;Mistry, Galal, and Lu 2009;Allendorf 2012;Coffey, Khera, and Spears 2016), son preference (Miller 1981;Das Gupta et al 2003), investments in children (Myroniuk, Vanneman, and Desai 2017), domestic violence (Fernandez 1997;Bhattacharya 2004), and so on. In this research context, understanding how modernization has transformed Indian households becomes even more essential.…”

Patterns of Access to Microfinance Loans in India

“…Earlier studies (e.g., Kumar & Venkatachalam, 2018) using this data set on household indebtedness did not focus on microfinance as loan source while studies on horizontal/vertical networks and confidence in institutions (Vanneman et al, 2006) have only related it with access to welfare programmes (Unnikrishnan, 2016) or access to higher education (Myroniuk, Vanneman, & Desai, 2017). None of these studies analysed features of inclusion or linked network and trust to loan sources of borrowing households or to non-borrowers.…”

Are Secondary Schools Imparting Digital Skills? An Empirical Assessment

“…There were four household occupation types in urban areas—self-employed, regular wage/salary, casual labour and others. 11 Intuitively, relative to self-employed, casual labour and other households, the regular wage/salaried household would offer a more stable and better home environment in terms of access to facilities, support, encouragement (Mudassir & Abubakar, 2015), and social capital (Myroniuk et al, 2017). Therefore, one would expect a positive sign on this household type, that is, secondary school students from regular wage/salary households would be more likely to have functional digital skills.…”