Predictors of the gender gap in household educational spending among school and college-going children in India

Though India has achieved near-universal primary school attendance and bridged the gender gap, secondary and technical education schooling remains low. Household ability to pay for education and gender norms at the household and societal levels are possible reasons for variations in school attendance and quality of schooling. Although various studies have examined the gender gap in enrolment and school discontinuation, there are limited studies on gender differentials in educational spending in Indian households. Using data from 174,810 school and college-going children aged 6–22 years from the 75th round of the National Sample Survey Organization, this paper explored the gender gap in household educational spending in India. Descriptive statistics, relative gap, and the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition method were used in the analysis. The results suggests that school attendance was 82.7% (95% CI 82.0–83.3) among boys and 78.9% (95% CI 78.1–79.7) among girls aged 16–17 years and 63.1% (95% CI 62.6–63.6) among boys and 51.3% (95% CI 50.7–51.9) among girls aged 18–22 years. The difference in the average per capita educational spending between boys and girls was ₹828 at the primary level (ages 6–10), ₹935 at the middle/secondary level (ages 11–15), ₹3189 at the higher secondary level (ages 16–17), and ₹3813 in higher education (age 18–22). The results obtained from the Blinder-Oaxaca Decomposition analysis show that type of educational institution (public or private) contributed more than half of the variation in household educational spending among 6–10- and 11–15-year-old children and was the strongest contributor at every age. The education of the household head considerably reduced the gender gap in higher education. Locational disadvantage and the uniformity in the gender gap across all levels of the economic hierarchy suggest a behavioural bias in the intra-household allocation of educational resources across the states of India.