Purpose This paper aims to detect gender bias in education expenditure on “students”, who are children and young adults, in a household in the rural and the urban sectors of West Bengal. Outlay equivalent ratios have been calculated using the Engel curve approach, where the budget share function is log quadratic in income, to identify items relating exclusively to education of school/college going students. Heckman’s (1979) two-step procedure is used for estimation to address selection bias The 68th round (July 2011 to June 2012) household level consumption expenditure survey data of the National Sample Survey Organisation have been used for the analysis. Design/methodology/approach Engel curve approach is used to capture parental preference for student’s welfare and to find the existence of male student favouritism in the field of education. In case of exclusive adult goods, the addition of a student will reduce the resource allocated for adult goods leading to negative income effect. If a household favours males over females, then that household is likely to sacrifice more for a male student’s education than that for a female student. To address selection bias, Heckman’s two-step procedure has been used. Findings The authors find that not all education items relate exclusively to students of a household. Expenditure on books is not exclusively for students, whereas other educational items, such as stationary and photocopy charges, tuition fees and private coaching fees, are found to be students’ items only. Transport cost is found to be an adult good. Further, we find evidence of pro male bias in expenditure on educational items, and the extent of gender bias is more in the urban sectors compared to the rural sectors in West Bengal. Originality/value The objective of this paper is to identify the educational items exclusively for “students” and to test the difference in the allocation of resources in education, with respect to these items, between a male student and a female student for both sectors in West Bengal, using the outlay equivalent ratios.
This article examines the dropout behaviour of students below class 10 level (maximum age of 16 years) from two different perspectives. First, from the parents’ perspective, we identify the major characteristics of a household that forces the child to dropout from school, using a Probit analysis. Second, from the child’s perspective, we try to relate the reasons for dropping out (as specified by the child) with the background of the household the child belongs to and the school infrastructure provided to him/her, through a multinomial logit model. The data set used is the 71st round (January 2014 to June 2014) data on education expenditure and is provided by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO). The analysis is done for the state of West Bengal, India, separately for boys and girls. It shows the significance of parental education and economic factors in children’s dropout behaviour, which is in line with the observations in existing literature. Additionally, this article offers children’s perspectives on such behaviour from across genders and economic classes.
Purpose Many aspects of well-being depend critically on individual-level expenditure and consumption. The Millennium Development Goals include the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women, which partly have to do with women’s access to resources within households. Many important questions in labour, public and development economics also hinge on the intra-household distribution of resources. This paper aims to estimate the resource shares within a household in the rural and urban sectors of West Bengal through a collective household model, where each household member has a specific utility function. The sharing rule parameters, that determine the apportionment of resources between members within a household, are estimated in an intra-household collective framework. The analysis is based on a system of log-quadratic Engel curves estimated using the 68th round (2011–2012) household-level consumption expenditure data of the Indian National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) for rural and urban sectors separately for the state of West Bengal. Design/methodology/approach The sharing rule parameters (that determine the apportionment of resources between members) within a household are estimated in an intra-household collective framework as suggested by Dunbar et al. (2013). The analysis is based on a Quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System (QUAIDS) estimated using the 68th round (2011–2012) household-level consumption expenditure data of the Indian NSSO. Findings In this paper, the authors estimate the sharing rule of total household expenditure between couples in a household in the state of West Bengal. They use a modified version of the QUAIDS and the 68th round (2011–2012) household-level consumer expenditure data provided by the NSSO. From the exercise, it emerges that on an average, the resource shares between husband and wife in a household is about 66:34% in the rural sector and about 60:40% in the urban sector. Based on a classification of households by the distribution of resource shares, where higher resource share for the husband is classified as “Husband dominated” and the reverse as “Wife dominated”, the percentage of “Husband dominated” households is much more in both sectors. This unequal distribution of resources may have far-reaching consequences on allocation of expenditure on the children of the household. The authors leave this exercise as a future project. Originality/value This paper is an attempt to estimate the sharing rule for households using NSSO consumption expenditure data. This paper also highlights the intra household unequal resource allocation through the sharing rule. They use a modified version of the QUAIDS and the 68th round (2011–2012) household-level consumer expenditure data provided by the NSSO. From the exercise, it emerges that on an average, the resource shares between husband and wife in a household is about 66:34% in the rural sector and about 60:40% in the urban sector. Based on a classification of households by the distribution of resource shares, where higher resource share for the husband is classified as “Husband dominated” and the reverse as “Wife dominated”, the percentage of “Husband dominated” households is much more in both sectors. This unequal distribution of resources may have far-reaching consequences on allocation of expenditure on the children of the household. The authors leave this exercise as a future project.
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