Primary school completion in India, 1950-2000

The share of the Indian population who attended school has increased steadily over the past 50 years. Data on educational attainment in India shows that about 80% of all persons born around 1990 have attended at least primary school. Of the generation born between 1950 and 1970, only about 55% ever attended school.

Not every child who enters primary school completes that level of education. High dropout rates are a particular concern in Sub-Saharan Africa, the region with the lowest school life expectancy values worldwide. In India, on the other hand, most children who enter the first grade stay in primary school until they graduate after five years of education. The graph below compares the percentage of Indians who attended primary school (independent of the number of years) with the percentage who completed primary education between 1950 and 2000. The data, from a 2000 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS), is disaggegrated by sex and area of residence.

Primary school attendance and completion by year of birth, India 1950-2000

Data source: India 2000 MICS.

The population is grouped by year of birth and for each cohort three values are shown:

• the percentage who attended primary school or higher (blue area)
• the percentage who completed primary school (green area)
• the percentage of primary entrants who completed primary school (ratio completed primary/attended primary, red line)

In urban areas, virtually all residents who attend primary school also complete that level of education. In rural India, completion rates are slightly lower but even here children typically stay in school until they graduate. 85% to 90% of primary school students born between 1950 and 1970 went on to graduate. Since 1970, this share has increased to more than 93% for India as a whole and in urban areas this value is as high as 97%. (The gap between primary school attendance and completion rates since 1990 is explained by the fact that children born since then were not old enough to have completed primary school at the time of the survey.)

The education system in India succeeds at keeping children in school. Children currently out of school are therefore likely to complete at least the primary level of education once they take the crucial step of enrolling in the first grade. A disaggregation of primary school attendance rates in India makes clear that many of the children out of school are girls from poor rural households. Educators and policy makers have to focus their efforts on this group of children to reach the Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education.

Related articles

• Education disparity in South Asia

Friedrich Huebler, 18 October 2005 (edited 12 October 2008), Creative Commons License
Permanent URL: http://huebler.blogspot.com/2005/10/primary-school-completion-in-india.html

Educational attainment in India, 1950-2000

India is well on the way to achieving the Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education by the year 2015. In spite of rapid population growth during the last 50 years, India has managed to expand its education system to reach an ever larger part of the population.

The increase in educational attainment since 1950 can be traced with data from a Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) that was conducted in India in 2000. This nationally representative household survey collected data on the education of all household members aged 5 years or older. The data indicates whether a person attended school, at which level, and for how many years. By grouping all household members by year of birth we can calculate the percentage of a cohort that has attended - but not necessarily completed - a certain level of education. The graph below plots these values for all persons born between 1950 and 2000, disaggregated by sex and area of residence.

Educational attainment by year of birth, India 1950-2000

Data source: India 2000 MICS.

For each cohort two values are shown:

• the percentage who attended primary school or higher (blue area)
• the percentage who attended secondary school or higher (red area)

Until the 1970s, attendance rates for the population as a whole remained stable. About 55% of the population born between 1950 and 1970 attended primary school or higher. For persons born around 1990, this value has increased to roughly 80%.

School attendance rates were historically highest among urban males. Already in the 1950s, 90% of this group attended school at the primary level or higher. In contrast, the most disadvantaged group are women living in rural India. In the 1950s, only 25% of this group attended at least primary school. Women born since the 1970s are much more likely to benefit from education. The percentage of rural women who attended primary school or higher has increased from about 30% in the 1960s to about 70% in the 1990s.

Secondary school attendance rates have increased at a similar pace but at a lower lever. Most children who attend primary school continue their education at the secondary level. In 2000, the primary school net attendance rate in India overall was estimated to be 75% for boys and 69% for girls. The secondary school net attendance rate was estimated to be 54% for boys and 46% for girls. There has been much progress toward gender equality over the last 50 years but women and girls are still disadvantaged in Indian society.

Related articles

• Primary school completion in India, 1950-2000
• Education disparity in South Asia
• Educational attainment in sub-Saharan Africa

Friedrich Huebler, 10 October 2005 (edited 12 October 2008), Creative Commons License
Permanent URL: http://huebler.blogspot.com/2005/10/educational-attainment-in-india-1950.html

Guide to reading Statalist with Gmail

Statalist is a mailing list for users of the Stata statistical package. To subscribe to Statalist, send an e-mail message to majordomo@hsphsun2.harvard.edu, with the text "subscribe statalist" (without quotes) in the body of the message.

In Gmail all messages are displayed with a variable-width font by default. This can make Statalist messages hard to read if they contain tables that only lign up properly with a fixed-width font. Here is a typical Stata table:

    Variable |       Obs        Mean    Std. Dev.       Min        Max
-------------+--------------------------------------------------------
         age |     11258    10.46394    2.277534          7         14
      school |     11209    .7712552    .4200433          0          1

In Gmail the same table would be displayed like this:

    Variable |       Obs        Mean    Std. Dev.       Min        Max
-------------+--------------------------------------------------------
         age |     11258    10.46394    2.277534          7         14
      school |     11209    .7712552    .4200433          0          1

Gmail has no setting to change the font but users of the Firefox browser can overcome this limitation by editing the file userContent.css in their Firefox profile. If the file userContent.css does not exist you can create a text file with that name and save it in your profile folder. This and other profile files can also be edited easily with the chromEdit extension for Firefox.

Adding the lines below to userContent.css overrides the Gmail settings for non-HTML mail and all simple text messages are then displayed with a fixed-width font.

div.msg div.mb {
   font-family: monospace !important;
   font-size: 12px !important;
}
textarea.tb {
   font-family: monospace !important;
   font-size: 12px !important;
}
td.ct {
   font-family: monospace !important;
   font-size: 12px !important;
}

The procedure is described in more detail on the site of Michael Gauthier, where I learned about this approach.

Update (22 June 2008)

As of June 2008, the instructions above are obsolete. Google has added a "Fixed width font" option to Gmail. To activate this feature, follow these steps:

• In Gmail, click on "Settings".
• In the Settings menu, click on "Labs".
• Look for the "Fixed width font" option and select "Enable".
• Click on "Save Changes".

To read a message in fixed width font, open the message, click on the "Reply" drop-down menu in the upper right corner of the message, and select "Show in fixed width font".

Related articles

• Guide to integrating Stata and external text editors
• Creating maps with Stata
• Creating PNG images with Stata

Friedrich Huebler, 3 October 2005 (edited 22 June 2008), Creative Commons License

Secondary school attendance in India

A Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) that was conducted in India in 2000 showed that 72.1% of all children of primary school age (6-10 years) were attending primary school. (A previous post on this site has more details on primary school attendance in India.) Only two thirds of these children continue their education at the secondary level. Among children of secondary school age (11-17 years), 49.7% were in secondary school at the time of the MICS survey.

A comparison of primary and secondary school net attendance rates (NAR) reveals that virtually all primary school children from the richest 20% of all households go on to attend secondary school. For children from the poorest 20% of all households, the NAR drops from 64.0% at the primary level to 32.3% at the secondary level. Rural children are also much less likely to stay in school than urban children.

Secondary school net attendance rate, India 2000

Data source: India 2000 MICS.

The gender disparity that can be observed at the primary level is even more pronounced at the secondary level. The secondary school NAR among boys was 53.7%, compared to 45.7% for girls. A disaggregation of the data shows that this disparity at the country level is a consequence of gender discrimination in rural areas and among poor households. In urban areas and among the richest households, the gender parity index (GPI) - the ratio of female to male NAR - is at or close to 1. Rural girls and girls from the poorest household, on the other hand, are much less likely to attend secondary school than their male peers.

Secondary school net attendance rate, India 2000

	Total NAR (%)	Male NAR (%)	Female NAR (%)	Difference male- female	GPI female/ male
Urban	65.1	65.0	65.1	-0.1	1.00
Rural	44.2	49.6	38.7	10.8	0.78
Richest 20%	78.1	79.1	77.1	1.9	0.98
Poorest 20%	32.3	38.3	26.2	12.0	0.69
Total	49.7	53.7	45.7	8.0	0.85

GPI: gender parity index. - Data source: India 2000 MICS.

Friedrich Huebler, 25 September 2005 (edited 27 January 2007), Creative Commons License

National wealth and school enrollment

The first and second goal of the Millennium Development Goals are the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger and the achievement of universal primary education. In previous posts I presented evidence on the connection between poverty and education in India and the United States. At the global level, this link is also evident. Middle and high income countries typically have higher levels of school enrollment than low income countries.

This relationship can be demonstrated by plotting school net enrollment ratios (NER) against gross domestic product (GDP) per capita as a measure of national wealth. The graphs below present the primary and secondary school NER in 2002/03 (the latest year with data) in relation to GDP per capita in 2002. School enrollment figures are from the Global Education Digest 2005 by UNESCO and the GDP per capita from the World Development Indicators 2005 by the World Bank. The GDP data was adjusted with purchasing power parities (PPP) to take the price levels in different countries into account. In addition, the GDP per capita is plotted on a logarithmic scale so that the relationship with NER can be seen more easily.

The first graph makes clear that low income countries have significantly lower levels of primary school enrollment. Most countries with a GDP per capita of $2,500 or less have net enrollment ratios below 80%. Almost all countries above this level of GDP have NER values of more than 80%.

Primary school net enrollment ratio and GDP per capita, 2002

Data sources: (1) Primary school NER: Global Education Digest 2005, UNESCO Institute for Statistics. - (2) GDP per capita: World Development Indicators 2005, World Bank.

The link between national wealth and school enrollment is even more obvious at the secondary level of education. Virtually all countries with a secondary school NER below 60% have a GDP per capita of less than $10,000. In contrast, all countries with a per capita income of more than $15,000 have NER levels near or above 80%.

Secondary school net enrollment ratio and GDP per capita, 2002

Data sources: (1) Secondary school NER: Global Education Digest 2005, UNESCO Institute for Statistics. - (2) GDP per capita: World Development Indicators 2005, World Bank.

Related articles

• National wealth and years of education
• Household wealth and years of education
• Poverty and educational attainment in the United States
• Poverty and educational attainment in the United States, part 2

Friedrich Huebler, 18 September 2005 (edited 28 August 2008), Creative Commons License
Permanent URL: http://huebler.blogspot.com/2005/09/national-wealth-and-school-enrollment.html

Poverty and educational attainment in the United States, part 2

Poverty and education are closely linked. In India, for example, children from the poorest households are least likely to attend primary school. Such a link between poverty and education also exists in industrialized countries. In the United States, the states with the highest poverty rates are also those with the lowest share of high school graduates. The graph below plots the percent of the population living below the poverty level against the percent of the population above 25 years of age without complete high school education. The data is from the 2004 American Community Survey and all states are marked with their U.S. postal abbreviation.

Percent of population below poverty level and percent of population 25 years and over who did not graduate from high school, United States 2004

Data source: 2004 American Community Survey.

The regression line emphasizes the close link between poverty and lack of education in the United States. Mississippi has the poorest and least educated population, with 22 percent living below the poverty level and 23 percent not having graduated from high school. Other states with a low share of high school graduates and high poverty rates are Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, New Mexico, Texas, and West Virginia. In contrast, Alaska, Connecticut, Minnesota, and New Hampshire have the least poor and most educated population in the United States. In the country as a whole, 13 percent of the population live below the poverty level and 16 percent did not graduate from high school.

Related articles

• Poverty and educational attainment in the United States
• Achievement gap between black and white students in the United States
• National wealth and school enrollment
• Household wealth and years of education
• Educational attainment in sub-Saharan Africa

Friedrich Huebler, 12 September 2005 (edited 9 May 2009), Creative Commons License
Permanent URL: http://huebler.blogspot.com/2005/09/poverty-and-educational-attainment-in_12.html

Poverty and educational attainment in the United States

On August 29, 2005, hurricane Katrina, possibly the deadliest storm in U.S. history, caused extensive damage in the southeastern United States. The victims of Katrina tended to be black, poor and less educated and many did not have the means to leave the area before the storm arrived.

Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, the states that were particularly hard hit, are among the poorest in the nation, according to data from the 2004 American Community Survey by the U.S. Census Bureau. In Mississippi, 21.6% of the population lived below the poverty line, more than in any other U.S. state. Louisiana was the second poorest state, with 19.4% of the population living below the poverty line. Alabama was the ninth poorest of the 50 states, with 16.1% below the poverty line. New Orleans, the city with the highest number of storm victims, had a poverty rate of 23.2%. In comparison, 13.1% of the entire U.S. population lived below the poverty line in 2004. In terms of education, the three states affected most by the hurricane also rank near the bottom of the 50 U.S. states, as the graph below shows.

Percent of population 25 years and over who graduated from high school, United States 2004

Data source: 2004 American Community Survey.

The 2004 American Community Survey found that 83.9% of the U.S. population aged 25 years and over graduated from high school, which means that they have at least 12 years of education. In the graph above, the states are ranked by the share of the population who completed high school. Mississippi had the lowest percentage of high school graduates, 77.3%. Alabama with 79.5% and Louisiana with 79.9% rank fifth and sixth in terms of the lowest share of high school graduates.

The victims of hurricane Katrina are mostly from the margins of U.S. society, poor, with little education and limited economic opportunities. Local, state and national government agencies have the responsibility to assist those in need but there has been widespread criticism of the government's slow response to the disaster. Many survivors have lost their homes and other belongings and are unable to provide for themselves. They will depend on help from the government and charitable organizations like the Red Cross for many months and years to come.

Related articles

• Poverty and educational attainment in the United States, part 2
• Achievement gap between black and white students in the United States
• National wealth and school enrollment
• Household wealth and years of education
• Educational attainment in sub-Saharan Africa

Friedrich Huebler, 4 September 2005 (edited 9 May 2009), Creative Commons License
Permanent URL: http://huebler.blogspot.com/2005/09/poverty-and-educational-attainment-in.html