Multigenerational Effects of Education Reform: Mother’s Education and Children’s Human Capital in Nepal

The impact of national efforts to increase supply of education, such as Nepal’s National Education System Plan, may vary across social groups due to differences in social factors that determine access to and demand for education. This paper studies the heterogeneous impact of this reform across gender and caste groups—two important social dimensions in Nepal’s context—over two generations. It uses data from the Nepal National Population and Housing Census 2011 and implements a difference-in-differences framework that utilizes across district variation in intensity of the reform measured by placement of trained teachers per 100 children and across cohort variation in exposure determined by birth year. The study finds that the reform improved females’ education attainment, but such positive effects are not present among women belonging to lower-caste subgroups. In addition, it finds that the reform had positive effects on schooling of the next generation; the multigenerational effects are also concentrated among girls from higher-caste households. The study validates its main findings by conducting a placebo exercise on a sample of individuals who had surpassed their school-going age by the time of the reform.