IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/sochwe/v32y2009i2p181-196.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A new and easy-to-use measure of literacy, its axiomatic properties and an application

Author

Listed:
  • Kaushik Basu
  • Travis Lee

Abstract

It can be argued that just as there are different kinds of literacy, there are different kinds of illiteracy. A 'proximate illiterate,' i.e. an illiterate who has easy access to a literate person, is clearly better off than someone without such access. The existing literature that takes account of these differences (1) defines an illiterate person to be a proximate illiterate if he or she lives in a household with at least one literate person and (2) derives new measures of literacy which typically exceed the standard literacy rate. The latter risks generating policy complacency. The aim of this paper is to suggest a measure of literacy that is not limited by (1) and (2). The measure is axiomatically characterized and its use is illustrated with a numerical exercise for the provinces of South Africa.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Kaushik Basu & Travis Lee, 2009. "A new and easy-to-use measure of literacy, its axiomatic properties and an application," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 32(2), pages 181-196, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:sochwe:v:32:y:2009:i:2:p:181-196
    DOI: 10.1007/s00355-008-0317-9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s00355-008-0317-9
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s00355-008-0317-9?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Basu, Kaushik & Foster, James E, 1998. "On Measuring Literacy," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 108(451), pages 1733-1749, November.
    2. Gibson, John, 2001. "Literacy and Intrahousehold Externalities," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 155-166, January.
    3. Lee, Travis, 2008. "Benchmarking the effective literacy rate," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 233-239, September.
    4. Mitra, Tapan, 2002. "On Literacy Rankings," Working Papers 02-16, Cornell University, Center for Analytic Economics.
    5. Basu, Kaushik & Narayan, Ambar & Ravallion, Martin, 2001. "Is literacy shared within households? Theory and evidence for Bangladesh," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(6), pages 649-665, December.
    6. Dutta, Indranil, 2004. "Generalized measures of literacy," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 69-80, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yared Seid, 2021. "Do illiterate mothers learn from their literate kids? Evidence from maternal nutritional knowledge," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(2), pages 677-693, May.
    2. Esposito, Lucio & Kebede, Bereket & Maddox, Bryan, 2011. "Literacy Practices and Schooling: A Case Study from Mozambique," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 39(10), pages 1796-1807.
    3. Iñaki Permanyer & Joan García & Albert Esteve, 2013. "The Impact of Educational Homogamy on Isolated Illiteracy Levels," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 50(6), pages 2209-2225, December.
    4. Sreenivasan Subramanian, 2011. "Inter-group Disparities in the Distributional Analysis of Human Development: Concepts, Measurement, and Illustrative Applications," The Review of Black Political Economy, Springer;National Economic Association, vol. 38(1), pages 27-52, March.
    5. Azevedo,Joao Pedro Wagner De, 2020. "Learning Poverty : Measures and Simulations," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9446, The World Bank.
    6. Indranil Dutta & Laurence Roope & Horst Zank, 2011. "On Intertemporal Poverty: Affluence-Dependent Measures," Economics Discussion Paper Series 1112, Economics, The University of Manchester.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Iñaki Permanyer & Joan García & Albert Esteve, 2013. "The Impact of Educational Homogamy on Isolated Illiteracy Levels," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 50(6), pages 2209-2225, December.
    2. Lee, Travis, 2008. "Benchmarking the effective literacy rate," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 233-239, September.
    3. Husain, Zakir & Dutta, Mousumi & Ghosh, Sriparna, 2011. "Contraceptive use among illiterate women in India: does proximate illiteracy matter?," MPRA Paper 30790, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Mukherjee, Diganta & Ranjan Gupta, Manash, 2003. "Measures of effective literacy: a theoretical note," ISER Working Paper Series 2003-10, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    5. Nolen, Patrick, 2006. "Unemployment and Family-Values: A Household Distribution Sensitive Measure of Unemployment and Some Applications," Working Papers 05-03rr, Cornell University, Center for Analytic Economics.
    6. Nolen, Patrick, 2013. "Unemployment and household values: Distribution sensitive measures of unemployment," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 354-362.
    7. Sreenivasan Subramanian, 2011. "Inter-group Disparities in the Distributional Analysis of Human Development: Concepts, Measurement, and Illustrative Applications," The Review of Black Political Economy, Springer;National Economic Association, vol. 38(1), pages 27-52, March.
    8. Yared Seid, 2021. "Do illiterate mothers learn from their literate kids? Evidence from maternal nutritional knowledge," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(2), pages 677-693, May.
    9. Masakazu Hojo, 2012. "Shared literacy and employment in the nonfarm sector," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(10), pages 1209-1217, April.
    10. Maddox, Bryan, 2007. "Worlds Apart? Ethnographic Reflections on "Effective Literacy" and Intrahousehold Externalities," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 532-541, March.
    11. Husain, Zakir & Dutta, Mousumi, 2012. "Proximate illiteracy and modern contraceptive use in India: Analysis of DHS data," MPRA Paper 39951, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Francesco Burchi, 2012. "Whose education affects a child’s nutritional status? From parents' to household's education," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 27(23), pages 681-704.
    13. Lindelow, Magnus, 2004. "Health care decisions as a family matter - intra-household education externalities and the utilization of health services," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3324, The World Bank.
    14. Valenti, Paola, 2002. "Should We Be Concerned about the Distribution of Literacy across Households? An Axiomatic Investigation," Working Papers 02-15, Cornell University, Center for Analytic Economics.
    15. S. Subramanian, 2008. "Externality and Literacy: A Note," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(6), pages 839-848.
    16. Srijit Mishra, 2005. "Secluded and Proximate Illiteracy: Comparing Situations," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 70(2), pages 231-240, January.
    17. Borooah, Vani K., 2004. "Gender bias among children in India in their diet and immunisation against disease," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 58(9), pages 1719-1731, May.
    18. Deshpande, Ashwini & Desrochers, Alain & Ksoll, Christopher & Shonchoy, Abu S., 2017. "The Impact of a Computer-based Adult Literacy Program on Literacy and Numeracy: Evidence from India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 451-473.
    19. Sabina Alkire & Maria Emma Santos, 2010. "Acute Multidimensional Poverty: A New Index for Developing Countries," Human Development Research Papers (2009 to present) HDRP-2010-11, Human Development Report Office (HDRO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
    20. Basu, Kaushik & Narayan, Ambar & Ravallion, Martin, 1999. "Is knowledge shared within households?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2261, The World Bank.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I20 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - General
    • I30 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
    • O20 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Development Planning and Policy - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:sochwe:v:32:y:2009:i:2:p:181-196. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.