Educational Inequality in India: A Decomposition Analysis

This paper presents estimates of educational inequality for the major states of India. We compute the education Gini index and examine trends in inequality, separately for the rural and urban sectors. The paper uses unit level data from four rounds of employment and unemployment survey of National Sample Survey Organization, Government of India. The estimates show the high extent of educational inequality. Though the inequality has declined during 1993 to 2009, the Gini index is well above 50% in 2009. There is a clear regional contrast; the index in the rural sector is higher by 18 percentage points than in the urban sector in 2009. Using the analysis of Gini, we show a large part of educational inequality is due to intra-sector inequality. We find that intra-sector inequality has widened, and inter-sector inequality has narrowed over the period. Although progress has been made, a lot more remains to be done. There is still need to give more attention on education in rural areas.