Education and Household Inequality Change: A Decomposition Analysis for India

Rising returns to education have increased wage inequality in many developing countries, but their impact on inequality between households is less clear. This study asks how education contributed to household inequality in India during the period 1993-2004, using a regression based decomposition met...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Journal of development studies Vol. 47; no. 12; pp. 1909 - 1924
Main Author Pieters, Janneke
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Abingdon Routledge 01.12.2011
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Taylor & Francis (Routledge)
Subjects
Continuing education
Developing Countries
Education
Employees
Fertility
Higher Education
Households
Humanities and Social Sciences
Income Inequality
India
Inequality
LDCs
Regression analysis
Wage differential
Wage differentials
Wages
India
Social Sciences & Humanities
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Summary:Rising returns to education have increased wage inequality in many developing countries, but their impact on inequality between households is less clear. This study asks how education contributed to household inequality in India during the period 1993-2004, using a regression based decomposition method. We find that rising returns to education of employees did not increase household inequality, because many household heads are self-employed. Instead, rising inequality in education contributed to higher inequality, partly because fertility declined more slowly among illiterates. These new insights into the education-inequality relationship in India underline the importance of household-level analysis to complement earnings inequality research.
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ISSN:0022-0388
1743-9140
DOI:10.1080/00220388.2011.561323