IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/25608.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Right to Education Act: Trends in Enrollment, Test Scores, and School Quality

Author

Listed:
  • Manisha Shah
  • Bryce Millett Steinberg

Abstract

The Right to Education Act in 2009 guaranteed access to free primary education for all children in India ages 6-14. This paper investigates whether national trends in educational data changed around the time of this law using household surveys and administrative data. We document four trends: (1) School-going increases after the passage of RTE, (2) Test scores decline dramatically after 2010, (3) School infrastructure appears to be improving both before and after RTE, and (4) The number of students who have to repeat a grade falls precipitously after RTE is enacted, in line with the official provisions of the law.

Suggested Citation

  • Manisha Shah & Bryce Millett Steinberg, 2019. "The Right to Education Act: Trends in Enrollment, Test Scores, and School Quality," NBER Working Papers 25608, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:25608
    Note: CH DEV ED LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w25608.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Manisha Shah & Bryce Millett Steinberg, 2015. "Workfare and Human Capital Investment: Evidence from India," NBER Working Papers 21543, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Muralidharan, Karthik & Das, Jishnu & Holla, Alaka & Mohpal, Aakash, 2017. "The fiscal cost of weak governance: Evidence from teacher absence in India," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 116-135.
    3. Hsieh, Chang-Tai & Urquiola, Miguel, 2006. "The effects of generalized school choice on achievement and stratification: Evidence from Chile's voucher program," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(8-9), pages 1477-1503, September.
    4. Manisha Shah & Bryce Millett Steinberg, 2021. "Workfare and Human Capital Investment: Evidence from India," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 56(2), pages 380-405.
    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. Koussihouèdé, Oswald, 2020. "Primary school size and learning achievement in Senegal: Testing the quantity–quality trade-off," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    2. Chirantan Chatterjee & Eric A. Hanushek & Shreekanth Mahendiran, 2020. "Can Greater Access to Education Be Inequitable? New Evidence from India’s Right to Education Act," NBER Working Papers 27377, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Joshi, Radhika, 2020. "Can social integration in schools be mandated: Evidence from the Right to Education Act in India," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).

    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. Karthik Muralidharan & Paul Niehaus & Sandip Sukhtankar, 2017. "General Equilibrium Effects of (Improving) Public Employment Programs: Experimental Evidence from India," NBER Working Papers 23838, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Marta Favara & Catherine Porter & Tassew Woldehanna, 2019. "Smarter through social protection? Evaluating the impact of Ethiopia’s safety-net on child cognitive abilities," Oxford Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(1), pages 79-96, January.
    3. Bagavathinathan, Karan Singh & Chaurey, Ritam, 2020. "Workfare programs and children’s meals intake: Evidence from India," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    4. Nava Ashraf & Edward Glaeser & Abraham Holland & Bryce Millett Steinberg, 2017. "Water, Health and Wealth," NBER Working Papers 23807, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Andrew D. Foster & Esther Gehrke, 2017. "Start What You Finish! Ex Ante Risk and Schooling Investments in the Presence of Dynamic Complementarities," NBER Working Papers 24041, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Merfeld, Joshua D., 2019. "Spatially heterogeneous effects of a public works program," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 151-167.
    7. Margherita Calderone, 2017. "Are there different spillover effects from cash transfers to men and women? Impacts on investments in education in post-war Uganda," WIDER Working Paper Series 093, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    8. Anjali Adukia & Sam Asher & Paul Novosad, 2020. "Educational Investment Responses to Economic Opportunity: Evidence from Indian Road Construction," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 12(1), pages 348-376, January.
    9. Raphael Franck & Stelios Michalopoulos, 2017. "Emigration during the French Revolution: Consequences in the Short and Longue Durée," Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute Working Papers 2, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    10. Joshua D Merfeld, 2020. "Moving Up or Just Surviving? Nonfarm Self‐Employment in India," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 102(1), pages 32-53, January.
    11. Manisha Shah & Bryce Millett Steinberg, 2017. "Drought of Opportunities: Contemporaneous and Long-Term Impacts of Rainfall Shocks on Human Capital," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 125(2), pages 527-561.
    12. Dammert, Ana C. & de Hoop, Jacobus & Mvukiyehe, Eric & Rosati, Furio C., 2018. "Effects of public policy on child labor: Current knowledge, gaps, and implications for program design," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 104-123.
    13. Merfeld, Joshua D, 2017. "Spatially Heterogeneous Effects of a Public Works Program," MPRA Paper 80630, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Xu, Kun & Guan, Zhihua & Xu, Wenli, 2015. "省级财政支出效率空间溢出效应研究：基于超效率dea和gsm模型 [Study on Spatial Spillover Effect of Provincial Fiscal Efficiency: Based on Super-Efficient DEA and GSM Model]," MPRA Paper 71132, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Gehrke, Esther & Hartwig, Renate, 2018. "Productive effects of public works programs: What do we know? What should we know?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 111-124.
    16. Deininger, Klaus & Nagarajan, Hari K & Singh, Sudhir K, 2020. "Women's political leadership and economic empowerment: Evidence from public works in India," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 277-291.
    17. Aurino, Elisabetta & Morrow, Virginia, 2018. "“Food prices were high, and the dal became watery”. Mixed-method evidence on household food insecurity and children’s diets in India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 211-224.
    18. Chari, A.V. & Glick, Peter & Okeke, Edward & Srinivasan, Sinduja V., 2019. "Workfare and infant health: Evidence from India's public works program," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 116-134.
    19. Deininger,Klaus W. & Jin,Songqing & Nagarajan,Hari Krishnan & Singh,Sudhir K., 2020. "Political Reservation and Female Labor Force Participation in Rural India," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9350, The World Bank.
    20. Xue, Melanie Meng, 2018. "High-Value Work and the Rise of Women: The Cotton Revolution and Gender Equality in China," MPRA Paper 91100, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I2 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education
    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • I25 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Economic Development
    • O1 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development
    • O38 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Government Policy
    • O53 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Asia including Middle East

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:nbr:nberwo:25608. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.