Out-of-school girls in India: a study of socioeconomic-spatial disparities

Abstract

Despite numerous established benefits of girls' education, globally large numbers of girls are out-of-school (OOS). This poses challenges to achieving quality education (SDG 4) and gender equality (SDG 5) by 2030. In India, there are socioeconomic and spatial disparities also. The latest National Sample Survey data provides an opportunity to explore these issues. We used the unit-level data of 117,115 children (5-17 years). Our multivariate logistic regression analysis shows that the likelihood of OOS girls is at least 16% higher than that of boys. The probability declines at every stage of income quintile from 'poorest' to the 'richest'. The likelihood in urban areas is almost 35% lower than the rural areas. Compared to the upper castes the probability is higher for the backward castes. Compared to Hindus, the likelihood is higher among Muslims but lower among Christian and Sikh children. Our three-layer crosstabulation reveals that poor Scheduled-Tribes girls are the most vulnerable. The spatial plotting shows that the majority of the vulnerable regions belong to a few states viz. Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Gujarat. Therefore, we argue for localized solutions for girls of diverse socioeconomic backgrounds in different regions. The relevance of this study also arises from the fact that there might be a further increase in the number of OOS girls due to the COVID-19 pandemic. ANOVA test suggests that there might be a shift of girls from private to government schools also, which calls for strengthening the public education system to prevent the problem from aggravating further.

Detection of hotspots of school dropouts in India: A spatial clustering approach

“…Researchers have examined potential influences and identified significant effects of child, family, school, and community factors [21][22][23][24][25]. In addition to these specific concerns, the impact is even worse when child and family factors such as sex, caste, and religion combine with school-level factors such as attendance, pupil-teacher ratio, and school infrastructure [9,26,27]. An additional list of objects that are rarely researched is spatial factors.…”

“…In the continuum of the retention universalization goal, research on factors influencing school dropout generally concentrates on child, family, school and community-related factors [4][5][6][7][8]. Only a few studies incorporated the regional variation in the proportion of dropout rate [9]. The use of geographic information systems in educational research, planning, and policy strategizing is a relatively recent development.…”

Gender role differentiation in household fuel transition decision-making: Implications for education and training in Uganda

“…Society frames girls as responsible for household chores, such as cooking and housekeeping-related activities, thus denying them the opportunity to attend school (Choudhuri and Desai, 2020). There is a persistent viewpoint among most rural communities that education is not meant for girls but only for boys (Mitra et al, 2022). This exacerbates the problem of gender inequality in education outcomes.…”

“…For example, Humpert and Pfeifer (2013) reported that women in all age groups had low employment rates compared to men. Although there could be other factors contributing to the low employment of women, low education levels as a result of social construction of gender is one of them (Mitra et al, 2022). Mascherini et al (2016) also reported that women's participation in the labor market is still low despite the effort to create gender equality in employment.…”

Lives at Risk: A study of girls dropping out of school in Juba, Rumbek and Pibor Counties, South Sudan

“…About 139,000 are refugee children. UNICEF (Karamperidou, 2020) Studies indicate that rural adolescent girls are more disadvantaged, vulnerable and at risk of dropping out of school than those in urban areas (Mitra et al, 2022). The World Bank (2020) notes that female learners in South Sudan face multiple challenges in accessing and completing primary, secondary and higher education.…”