The Effect of Gender on Childrens Education Expenditure in India - Research Proposal Example

Research proposal From Group 8: Steve Lu, Mingyu Ma, Yufei Ma 3 March Proposed Research Topic: The Effect of gender on children’s education expenditure In India Project Summary This project studied different factors that affect expenditure on children’s education in India. While gender is explanatory variable, other factors such as maternal education, fraternal education, household income level, and support from government or NGOs are all included to explain the household expenditure on children’s education. Due to effort to provide access to free and compulsory education in a local school for all children from the age of 6 to 14, a huge increase in enrolment at elementary level across India had been achieved. However, given the monetary and legal resources needed to realize the goal in India, the hypothesis is that there is still wide gap between boys and girls in receiving different levels of education. According to a preliminary analysis of outcomes for the Older Cohort at age 19 in terms of education by Young Lives, gaps in level of education of 19-year-olds currently not enrolled in education between boys and girls are getting wider and wider. From secondary, higher secondary, post-secondary to university, the total percent of currently enrolled boys is 56.6% while girls is 40.9%. Further, the project would investigate the probability of dropping out of school across three regions, explained by parents’ education level, household income, and locations (urban or rural). If we assume that children leave school at the age of 15 (Secondary school) or smaller to be dropping out of school, the percent of sample of 19-year-old children no longer in secondary school is 15.8%. Introduction India is one of the countries in the world that has recorded high level of inequality. Despite rapid economic growth and globalization, stark inequalities are still high in the country. Women have remained disadvantaged as a result of unequal sharing of resources and opportunities. The study in this paper analyzes and explores some of the incidences of gender bias in the government injections towards education. The study analyzes the priority given to the male child by taking into consideration expenditure on education, probability of male enrolment and the type of schools attended by either sex. This paper asserts that a persistent bias in human capital investment is both economically and socially undesirable. Therefore gender equality is a necessary element in the growth of an economy. Another fundamental argument for gender equality in the education is adopted from the human capital theory. Under this theory, gender inequality will give more boys an opportunity to go to schools than girls. It is anchored on the assumption, that the distribution of innate ability amongst boys and girls are the same and those at the upper end of the distribution will make less able boys than girls to be educated. This inequality will result into reduction in the average level of human capital. In their study, Hill and King (1995) found out that a low level of male-female ratio is associated with low Gross Domestic Product per capita. Research has also proved that ther3e is likelihood of welfare being impacted through schooling via externalities including child morality, fall in fertility and improvement in the life of the child. Therefore a female that is deprived of equality education is detrimental to the society, making the need to offer equality education to all members of the society an important concept. UNICEF (2000) indicates that 35% of Indians population is below 18. With these percentages, the nation stands at a better opportunity to use its skilled young people to spur economic growth. The human capital investment on young people could accelerate the pace of the economy. A delay in the provision education facility and addressing gender biases could be an obstacle to the economic growth. (Benavot 28) Public policy adopted by the government can be a good catalyst to improve educational access by the females. The government of India has identified and appreciated that education is key to the future of the country. There are a number of state and local initiatives to improve education status in the country. The formulated policies besides privatization in the education sector saw a shift in schooling patterns. (Thomas 971) Kingdon (2005), Himaz (2009) and Kingdon & Azam (2011) have in the past examined the discrepancies in the education system in India, however with various dynamics which has affected the sector, it is in order to re-examine the bias in gender education. The study detects the existence of gender bias within the education expenditure in India by examining gender bias in deciding on the expenditure towards education. In a similar study, Himaz (2009) analyzed the gender bias in education in India using a panel data from Young lives. The data was collected between 2006 and 2007. The researcher concluded that gender bias on education expenditure hams a negative impact on the growth of the economy. (Pradhan and Subramanian 32) Despite the fact that there is no bias in the primary school enrolments, it is evident that the discrepancy continues as one continues to higher educations. As time go by, it is evident that there is a pro-boy bias with regards to school enrolment and the degree of expenditure also increases as time go by. Given that securing of a job depends mainly on the completion of secondary studies, gender bias means that a number of men will secure a job compared to women. (Subramanian and Deaton 9) The below sections will review and analyze the existing literature on education expenditure discrepancy in India. It then proceeds to discuss methodology and statistical analysis used in the paper. The paper also discusses result section before drawing the conclusion. Background Globally, children are the largest age group affected by poverty. Childhood poverty is having a severe impact on the development on a country, especially for a developing country, such as India. “We need to end child poverty in order to break the cycle of poverty,” said by Professor Jo Boyden from University of Oxford, who led the collaborative study on childhood poverty in developing countries. More specifically, childhood poverty is not only a monetary concept but also is related to many aspects. Childhood poverty can be measured and determined by a wide range of disciplines from anthropology, economics, education, health and nutrition, psychology, social policy, sociology, policy and research communication. India is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world. Over the last few years, India has become a significant global power. Its GDP growth rate for 2011-12 has reached 8.2% as per the Economic Outlook by the Government of India. All such indicators seem to suggest that India is currently on a path towards becoming a developed nation. This image though can be misleading. There are several key concerns that the Government of India and international developmental organizations must focus on in order to propel India even higher. One of the main focus areas is that of ‘Gender Disparity’. Our project shall focus on the gender based disparity in the Indian education system that children suffering from poverty are suffering extreme gender disparity. We pick our target country as India since India has a large group of children facing this situation that will lead to poverty circulation since many families only had girls would choose not to give educational expenditure to their children. Consequently, there is little chance those children will be employed when they grow up. Our project will specify the topic to childhood poverty on educational expenditure and its causalities especially on gender variable. Methodology and Data From the central question of this study, how does the gender affect the expenditures on children’s education, the following hypothesis emerges: parents invest less on girls’ education than on boys’. Thus, the null hypothesis is that the coefficient of gender variable is equal to zero, meaning that gender has no effect on children’s expenditure. The alternative hypothesis is that coefficient less than zero, meaning gender has negative effect on children’s expenditure. This linear model contains five variables to be measured: a) level of maternal education; b) level of fraternal education; c) household income; d) locations. Besides, OLS is used to estimate the linear model. Another model is used in investigating factors affecting probability of children dropping out of school. Since the variable drop off is either 1 or 0, limited dependent variable model is used to test the hypothesis. The null hypothesis is that, other factors being equal, variables related to the educational level have no effect on the probability of dropping off. The source of data is Young Lives, an international study dedicated to record the changing lives of children across countries over years. We are employing the Round 1-3 (2002-2009) cross-sectional data, comparing the relationship of variables in the model across different regions. Results The average age of those who were considered in the study is 9.943528 ; it is significant at the 0.05 level p(0.00). The average number of the females interviewed is -44.31351 with the p value being 0.000. The p value shows the significance at point 0.05 with its coefficient being negative indicating that gender has no effect or minimal effect on the education expenditure which is what is expected in the study. The variable helps in the explanation of the existing discrepancy in the education expenditure. Finally, expenditure on education is averaged as .006995 with the p-value of 0.00 0. Apart from the significance results above, it is clear that F-test is statistically significant meaning that the model is statistically significant. The R squared value of 0.2812 is about 10% which is accounted for by the model. The t-test for the for age is 6.97, female- -3.876; total expenditure; 0.97; school performance; 5.382972; public; -17.24; wi100-2.68;truembsibling—0.94; truefsibling-0.53; momedu-4.55; dadedu-3.27 among others. The data shows that all the variables are statistically significant meaning that the regression coefficient is different from zero. The analysis is similar to the F-statistic with some minimal rounding error. The coefficient for age for example is 11.06754 ; roughly 11 meaning that for a single unit of increase in age, there will be an expected increase in the expenditure by 11 times. The constant in the study is -17.64859 which the predicted value is when all other variables are equals to zero. When two variables are added to the data that existed, the results remained significant. The age of those interviewed of 10.45056, female members who were involved still remained -44.52571 2 with the total expenditure remaining at x0.0061154. This means that the significance of the variables is not affected even if another variable is added on the study. The age of student’s impact a lot on the educational expense in India. The significance shows that irrespective of the injection, expenditure on education will reduce with age .It translates that parents only consider to educate their girls when in basic schools as opposed to when in institutions of higher learning. Female variable is not affected by the introduction of another third party variable. The number of girl child in school is influence the expenditure on education. Family members and the government often spend little when girls are supposed to acquire education. In most cases men are encouraged. . t value proves that the newly added vars. are not significant. The results show that the t figures are not affected. The results are not affected by the addition of the new variables and therefore the regression coefficient is different from zero. The-F distribution is also not affected and still remains significant. This means that the null hypothesis of the variables having a correlation with the expenditure on education in India remains significant. Despite the minimal impact, the strong correlation resulted to the drop of the total expenditure. The results also show that the null coefficient equal to 0 is rejected. This shows that there is significance and there is strong relationship between the dependent variables and the independent variable. The study adopted the white heteroskedisticity which is robust standard error to ensure that there was no problem of heteroskadisticity. The data presents a direct close linear relationship between the exogenous and the endogenous variables. The data also showed that females scored good grades as they were starting their studies similar to their male counterparts. The trend however changed as time goes by. All the results presented with regards to the performance of the students are quite significant. In some regions females scored better grades compared to men; representing high level of potential that ladies have and their ability even to perform better. Across the religious divide, girls have been deprived of the opportunity to access quality education that can help them make their lives better and help them be good people. Without education, they are not able to get good relevant jobs; therefore they are forced to remain in the bondage of dependency and poverty. A Study also indicates that a number of parents are not willing to spend on the education of the girl child. The domestic education expenditure is mainly focused on the boy-child. The results of the coefficients are significant at 0.05. At all instances the t values for the all added variables are not zero. This shows that there are correlations and that the results explain the education expenditure in India. Through the use of a fitted value, the study got unbiased estimator; however it detected the error that also increased with the addition of other variables. The existing trade off between the unbiasness and variance explains the weakness in the tool. Conclusion There have been a number of changes reported in the education sector in India with regards to expenditure. The study re-analyzed the problem of gender bias in India using a data obtained from 2002-2009 from the Young Lives. The study realized that there is substantial pro-bias when deciding on when and how much to invest on education. The study also detected that gender bias increases with age. Parents always want their children to get the primary basic education but the same changes as they are growing up. The study believes that the promotion of girl child education and policies focusing on gender equality should be priority. The study confirms that in India, the incidences of discrepancies in the education expenditure are still high. The expenditure on boys with regards to education is higher compared to that of girls. Parents prefer investing their domestic funds on boy child as opposed to girl child in the society. The data proves that the one of the most important ways in which gender bias is recorded in India is through spending and continued education. As discussed above, when students are starting schooling the ratio of girl boy child is almost the same, however this changes as they proceed with their studies. There is very low gender bias on enrolment of children. The results and explanations provide a constructive support in the explanation of data aggregation at student level making it hard to pick the difference. Works Cited Benavot, A. “Education, Gender, and Economic Development: A Cross- National Study”. Sociology of Education, vol. 62 (1) , pp 14-32. 1989. Himaz, R. "Is there a boy bias in household education expenditure: the Case of Andhra Pr; 2009 print! Kingdon, George "Does the Labour Market Explain Lower Female Schooling in India?". The Journal of Development Studies, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol.35(1), pp 39-65. 1998! Pradhan, B. and A. Subramanian “Education, Openness, and the Poor: Analysis of an All-India Sample of Households”, Discussion Paper No. 14, National Council of Applied Economic Research, New Delhi. 2000 Print Subramanian, S. and Angus Deaton “Gender Effects in Indian Consumption Patterns”, Discussion Paper 147, Research Programme in Development Studies, Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University, also published in Sarvekshana, 14: 1-12, 1991. Thomas, Duncan ( “Like Father, Like Son; Like Mother, Like Daughter: Parental Resources and Child Height”, Journal of Human Resources, 29(4): 950-988. 1994 print! Read More