Uneven Gains and Bottom-50 Districts: Intergenerational Educational Mobility in India
Abstract
Using data from the National Family Health Survey-5 (2019–21), it is found that younger individuals (20–40 years) have made impressive gains in education. The average young Indian has a high school education—much better than their mother’s generation that went to school for only three years. Gender differences, large and concerning earlier, have nearly disappeared. However, areas of concern remain. Districts, rather than states, are variously forward and backward in education. People are mired in low-level education traps in a group of bottom-50 districts, which straddle state boundaries and are spread across the country. How much progress is made in the next generation will be determined by what happens in these lagging districts. Local innovation rather than standardised solutions will be required.
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Scholars@Duke
Anirudh Krishna
ANIRUDH KRISHNA is the Edgar T. Thompson Professor of Public Policy and Political Science at Duke University. His research investigates how poor communities and individuals in developing countries cope with the structural and personal constraints that result in poverty and powerlessness. His most recent book, The Broken Ladder: The Paradox and the Potential of India’s One-Billion (Cambridge University Press and Penguin Random House India), won the A. K. Coomaraswamy Award of the Association for Asian Studies. Krishna has authored or co-authored seven other books, including One Illness Away: Why People Become Poor and How they Escape Poverty, and more than eighty journal articles and book chapters. In 2011, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Uppsala University, Sweden. Before returning to academia, Krishna spent 14 years managing diverse rural and urban development initiatives for the government of India. He has advised the World Bank, the United Nations, national governments, and non-government organizations. His recent research on talent ladders is described in this TEDx talk.
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