Dropping out just does not pay

Economists have found a connection between the state of a family?s education and its income, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Published on: Dec 20, 2006, 02:05:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Economists have found a connection between the state of a family’s education and its income. Now, a government survey which was released on Tuesday talks about this relation in the Indian context.

According to the survey, for families earning more than Rs 2,540 per month, the attendance rate in educational institutions is as high as 68 per cent and the literacy rate is 98 per cent. However, for families earning less than Rs 235 per month, the attendance rate falls below 43 per cent and the literacy rate is just 53 per cent.

The national attendance rate is 50 per cent — that is the number of people in the 5-29 age group who attend educational institutions. Those who do not attend these institutes include the ones who have some education but have since dropped out.

The National Sample Survey Organisation’s Status of Educational and Vocational Training in India has found that attendance is higher in lower age groups and falls dramatically as children reach the age of supplementing family income. From an attendance rate of 821 out of 1,000 children in the age group of 5-14, the number falls to 114 in the 20-24 age group, which means that only 11.4 per cent students reach higher education institutions.

Those who do not attend educational institutions have given various reasons for it but a common refrain is “to supplement family income” — about 55 per cent of such people cite this as the main reason for their not attending school or college.

For women, the reason is different. Some 30 per cent girls say that they have left school because they are needed at home for “domestic chores”. Interestingly, the percentage of such girls is higher in urban areas than in rural areas. In rural areas, 17 per cent of people feel that it is not necessary to educate girls.

The study also speaks of poor skills among Indians. It says only two per cent of people above the age of 15 have technical qualification.

Email Chetan Chauhan: chetan @hindustantimes.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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