Inequality in Educational Attainment: Urban-Rural Comparison in the Indian Context

TL;DR

This study analyzes urban-rural literacy disparities in India from 1981 to 2011, using a novel index and regression analysis to identify factors that can reduce educational inequality.

Contribution

It introduces the Sopher urban-rural differential literacy index and applies fixed effects regression to identify key factors influencing literacy disparity in India.

Findings

Literacy disparity decreased over time but remained high in certain states.

Higher rural female education and labor participation reduce literacy gaps.

Lower rural fertility rates are associated with reduced educational inequality.

Abstract

The article tries to compare urban and rural literacy of fifteen selected Indian states during 1981 - 2011 and explores the instruments which can reduce the disparity in urban and rural educational attainment. The study constructs the Sopher urban-rural differential literacy index to analyze the trends of literacy disparity across fifteen states in India over time. Although literacy disparity has decreased over time, Sopher index shows that the states of Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Odisha, Maharashtra and even Karnataka faced high inequality in education between urban and rural India in 2011. Additionally, the Fixed Effect panel data regression technique has been applied in the study to identify the factors which influence urban-rural inequality in education. The model shows that the following factors can reduce literacy disparity between urban and rural areas of India: low fertility rate in rural women, higher percentages of rural females marrying after the age of 21 years, educational attainment of mothers and their labour force participation rate in rural areas.