Mehtabul Azam

Progress of Participation in Tertiary Education in India from 1993 to 2004

Mehtabul Azam — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 10:07:15 PDT

Using nationally representative household surveys, this paper examines the trends in attainment, enrolment, and access to tertiary (higher) education in India from 1983 to 2005. The findings suggest that there has been considerable progress in attainment and participation; however, they remain low. Important gaps exist in enrolment between rich and poor, rural and urban areas, men and women, disadvantaged groups and the general population, and states. Analysis of transition rates from secondary education to tertiary education and regression analysis indicate that inequality in tertiary education between disadvantaged groups and the general population is explained by low completion rates of secondary education. Inequality in tertiary education related to income, gender, rural residence, and between states is explained by: (i) differences in completion rates of secondary education, and (ii) differences in the probability of transitioning from secondary education to tertiary education. In particular, the importance of household income has grown markedly. Equitable expansion of secondary education is therefore critical for improving the equity of tertiary education. There is also a need to help qualified youth from low-income families and rural backgrounds to attend tertiary education, in particular the technical and engineering streams, in which participation is lower.

A distributional analysis of social group inequality in rural India

Mehtabul Azam — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 10:00:15 PDT

This paper examines the differences in welfare, as measured by per capita expenditure (PCE), between social groups in rural India across the entire welfare distribution. The paper establishes that the disadvantage suffered by two historically disadvantaged groups- Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs)—is underestimated when the comparison group is Non-SCs/STs rather than General Category (GC) (mostly higher castes). The ST households are the most disadvantaged followed by the SC and the Other Backward Caste (OBC) households with respect to GC households, and the disadvantage exists across the entire distribution. Better covariates and better returns to those covariates contribute to the advantage of the GC households.

Indian? Want to prosper? Learn English

Aimee Chin et al. — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 09:55:25 PDT

The Returns to English-Language Skills in India

Mehtabul Azam et al. — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 09:55:25 PDT

India’s Increasing Skill Premium: Role of Demand and Supply

Mehtabul Azam — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 09:55:24 PDT

Using micro data for India from 1983 to 2005, this paper finds that the tertiary (college)-secondary (high school) wage premium has been increasing in India over the past decade and that this increase differs across age groups. The increase in wage premiums has been driven mostly by younger age groups while older age groups have not experienced any significant increase. Using a demand and supply model with imperfect substitution across age groups (developed in Card and Lemieux, 2001), this paper demonstrates that workers are not perfect substitutes across age groups. The paper finds that the increase in the wage premium has come mostly from demand shifts in favor of workers with a tertiary education. More importantly, the growth rate of demand for tertiary educated workers relative to secondary educated workers was fairly stable in the 1980s and the 1990s. However, the relative supply played an important role not only in determining the extent of increase in wage premium, but also its timing. The increase in relative supply of tertiary workers during 1983-1993 negated the demand shift; as a result, the wage premium did not increase much. But during 1993-1999, the growth rate of the relative supply of tertiary workers decelerated, while relative supply became virtually stagnant during 1999-2004. Both these periods saw an increase in the wage premium as the countervailing supply shift was weak.

English skills raise wages for some, not all, in India

Nishith Prakash et al. — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 09:55:24 PDT

Does it pay to speak English? This column presents evidence from India that being fluent in English increases the hourly wages of men by 34% and of women by 22%. But the effects vary. Returns are higher for older and more educated workers and lower for less educated, younger workers, suggesting that English is becoming a complement to education.

A Distributional Analysis of Public Private Wage Differential in India

Mehtabul Azam et al. — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 09:55:23 PDT

We investigate the public-private wage differential in India using nationally representative micro data. While the existing literature focuses on average wage differential, we study the differences in the wage distributions. The raw wage differential between public and private sector is positive across the entire distribution for both genders irrespective of area of residence. A quantile regression based decomposition analysis reveals that the differences in observed characteristics (covariate effect) account for only a small part of the wage differential at lower quantiles, but a larger part at higher quantiles. At the very top of the distribution, covariate effects account for a majority of the observed wage differential.