Gender Inequality in School Enrolment and School Life Expectancy Among Socio-Economic Groups in India

The new human development Index devised by UNDP in 2010 replaced the adult literacy and school enrolment rate by School Life Expectancy (SLE) in measuring educational progress across countries/regions and groups. Though there were some attempt to prepare the SLE at national level, there are limited number of studies on gender differentials in SLE at regional level and among socio-economic groups. Using the unit data from 66th round, schedule 10.0 of National Sample Survey Organisation this paper estimates the gender inequality in SLE across the states of India and socio-economic groups. Besides, the gender differentials in school enrolment, drop-out and never attendance for primary, secondary and tertiary level has been analysed. Results indicate that the gender differentials in SLE is large across social and economic groups. The gender gap is large among those belonging to middle economic strata, other backward caste and Muslims. Among states the mean SLE varies from 10.3 years in Dadra Nagar Haveli to 14.6 years in Nagaland. The gender gap in enrolment indicate that for all levels of education higher differentials prevail in rural areas and they increase with the level. At tertiary level the gender gap in enrolment in rural areas is twice as much of that in urban areas.