IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/80194.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Educational Investment Responses to Economic Opportunity: Evidence from Indian Road Construction

Author

Listed:
  • Adukia, Anjali
  • Asher, Samuel
  • Novosad, Paul

Abstract

The rural poor in developing countries, once economically isolated, are increasingly being connected to regional markets. Whether these new connections crowd out or encourage educational investment is a central question. We examine the impacts on educational choices of 115,000 new roads built under India's flagship road construction program. We find that children stay in school longer and perform better on standardized exams. Treatment heterogeneity supports the predictions of a standard human capital investment model: enrollment increases are largest where nearby labor markets offer the highest returns to education and lowest where they imply high opportunity costs of schooling.

Suggested Citation

  • Adukia, Anjali & Asher, Samuel & Novosad, Paul, 2017. "Educational Investment Responses to Economic Opportunity: Evidence from Indian Road Construction," MPRA Paper 80194, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:80194
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/80194/1/MPRA_paper_80194.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Edmonds, Eric V. & Pavcnik, Nina, 2006. "International trade and child labor: Cross-country evidence," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 115-140, January.
    2. Elizabeth U. Cascio & Ayushi Narayan, 2015. "Who Needs a Fracking Education? The Educational Response to Low-Skill Biased Technological Change," NBER Working Papers 21359, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Anjali Adukia, 2017. "Sanitation and Education," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(2), pages 23-59, April.
    4. Dave Donaldson & Richard Hornbeck, 2016. "Railroads and American Economic Growth: A "Market Access" Approach," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 131(2), pages 799-858.
    5. 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.
    6. Afridi, Farzana & Mukhopadhyay, Abhiroop & Sahoo, Soham, 2012. "Female Labour Force Participation and Child Education in India: The Effect of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme," IZA Discussion Papers 6593, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
    7. David K. Evans & Anna Popova, 2016. "What Really Works to Improve Learning in Developing Countries? An Analysis of Divergent Findings in Systematic Reviews," World Bank Research Observer, World Bank Group, vol. 31(2), pages 242-270.
    8. Khandker, Shahidur R. & Koolwal, Gayatri B., 2011. "Estimating the long-term impacts of rural roads : a dynamic panel approach," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5867, The World Bank.
    9. Edmonds, Eric V., 2006. "Child labor and schooling responses to anticipated income in South Africa," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 386-414, December.
    10. repec:aea:aejapp:v:9:y:2017:i:3:p:321-50 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Shreyasee Das & Abhilasha Singh, 2013. "The Impact of Temporary Work Guarantee Programs on Children's Education: Evidence from the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Guarantee Act from India," Working Papers 13-03, UW-Whitewater, Department of Economics.
    12. Manisha Shah & Bryce Millett Steinberg, 2015. "Workfare and Human Capital Investment: Evidence from India," NBER Working Papers 21543, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Heath, Rachel & Mushfiq Mobarak, A., 2015. "Manufacturing growth and the lives of Bangladeshi women," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 1-15.
    14. Shahidur R. Khandker & Zaid Bakht & Gayatri B. Koolwal, 2009. "The Poverty Impact of Rural Roads: Evidence from Bangladesh," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 57(4), pages 685-722, July.
    15. Gauri Kartini Shastry, 2012. "Human Capital Response to Globalization: Education and Information Technology in India," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 47(2), pages 287-330.
    16. Banerjee, Abhijit & Somanathan, Rohini, 2007. "The political economy of public goods: Some evidence from India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(2), pages 287-314, March.
    17. Karthik Muralidharan & Nishith Prakash, 2017. "Cycling to School: Increasing Secondary School Enrollment for Girls in India," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(3), pages 321-350, July.
    18. Oster, Emily & Steinberg, Bryce Millett, 2013. "Do IT service centers promote school enrollment? Evidence from India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 123-135.
    19. Jacoby, Hanan G. & Minten, Bart, 2009. "On measuring the benefits of lower transport costs," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(1), pages 28-38, May.
    20. Ranjan, Priya, 1999. "An economic analysis of child labor," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 99-105, July.
    21. Justin Wolfers, 2006. "Did Unilateral Divorce Laws Raise Divorce Rates? A Reconciliation and New Results," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(5), pages 1802-1820, December.
    22. Edward Miguel & Michael Kremer, 2004. "Worms: Identifying Impacts on Education and Health in the Presence of Treatment Externalities," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 72(1), pages 159-217, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Education; Roads; India; Human capital; labor demand shocks; infrastructure; development;

    JEL classification:

    • I25 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Economic Development
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • O18 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Urban, Rural, Regional, and Transportation Analysis; Housing; Infrastructure

    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:pra:mprapa:80194. 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: (Joachim Winter). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.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.