Closely related to the current paper is a recent analysis of education and health
conducted for the World Bank by Anil Deolalikar (World Bank 2004; also see
Deolalikar 2005). Motivated in the same spirit as the current analysis, to assess the
likelihood of India attaining the MDG in education, this study provides a
comprehensive analysis of primary schooling is India. It uses the 55th round of the
National Sample Survey (NSS), conducted in 1999/2000. Multivariate probits are
estimated for primary school attendance, school attendance and primary completion
rates. The study finds that the largest marginal effects are associated with household
living standards, access to electricity and expenditure on elementary schooling.
The parameter estimates obtained for 1999/2000 are used to simulate indicators of
school achievement in 2015 under three alternative scenarios. All of these involves an
assumed change in each of nine predictor variables that were significant in the
estimated model. Consider the attendance equation. Here, these are adult schooling
amongst men and women, household consumption, annual public expenditure on
elementary education per 6-14 year-old child, and the following indicators of districtlevel
conditions: village access to pucca roads and electricity, the number of primary
schools per 1,000 children, the pupil-teacher ratio at the primary level, and crimes
against (kidnappings of) women and girls. Since the education deficit is concentrated
in the poor states (see footnote 1), the simulations group the Indian states as poor and
non-poor. In the first scenario, the specified characteristics in the poor states are
brought up to the national average. In the second scenario, they are brought up to the
average for the non-poor states. In the third scenario, they are increased at a specified
4
rate per annum between 1999/2000 and 2015. The specified rate is set for each of the
nine variables in an ad hoc way, to illustrate the possibilities. The predicted outcomes
for 2015 get progressively more encouraging as one moves from the first to the third
scenario. The overall conclusion in this study is that attaining the MDG for education
is extremely unlikely in the poor states and, as a result, in India as a whole.
The current study employs definitions of school outcomes similar to those used by
World Bank (2004) and it estimates multivariate probits that are similarly specified.
However, we use the NFHS data rather than the NSS, which is useful in that it
provides an opportunity to cross-check the results of one study against the other. A
contribution of the current study is that it uses repeated cross-sectional data (two
rounds of the NFHS) to investigate the growth in schooling indictors. It then assesses
the extent to which (a) the predictor variables actually change and (b) the parameters
are stable over time. We find that the predictor variables change much less than
hypothesized in the illustrative simulations conducted in World Bank (2004).3 For
example, in scenario-3, the assumed annual change in male and female years of
schooling is 0.25 and 0.3 respectively. Between 1992/3 and 1998/9, these variables
increased (for the sample of 6-11 year olds) by only 0.055 and 0.066 years per year
respectively. We also find that the parameters are not stable over time, which makes it
very difficult to extrapolate to the future. Indeed, we find that almost all of the growth
in schooling can be attributed to changes in the elasticities. We caution against the
common practice of making predictions on the assumption of stable parameters, while
recognizing that there may be no better alternative. We conclude that the prospect of
India attaining universal primary attendance is good, but that the prospect of attaining
universal completion rates in primary school is bleak unless a major intervention is
undertaken.