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Are Daughters Like Mothers: Evidence on Intergenerational Educational Mobility Among Young Females in India

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Abstract

Taking data from the ‘India Youth Survey: Situation and Needs’ the paper examines intergenerational educational mobility for young females (vis-à-vis their mothers) in India. The paper uses transition/mobility matrices and mobility measures widely used in the literature on intergenerational mobility for the examination. The overall intergenerational educational mobility among the young females in India is about 0.69 (the upper limit being 1). The upwards component of the overall intergenerational educational mobility is 0.55 (that is, nearly four-fifth of the overall). Also, the intergenerational educational mobility is slightly higher in the ‘Scheduled Castes and Tribes (SC/ST)’ compared to the ‘Other Backward Castes (OBC)’ as well as ‘Others’ castes. But the upward mobility is substantially higher in the ‘Others’ caste group compared to SC/STs. The upward mobility among the OBCs is higher than that of SC/STs but lower than that of the ‘Others’ category. Also, the overall mobility as well as upward mobility is higher in urban areas. Moreover, there are large inter-state variations with the economically and demographically poorer states having substantially lower overall as well as upward mobility than the economically and demographically advanced states.

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Notes

  1. Motiram and Singh (2012) is a comprehensive study on intergenerational occupation mobility among males in India. It uses Indian Human Development Survey (IHDS) 2004–2005 and has also noted that why IHDS (2004–2005) cannot be used to examine intergenerational mobility for females.

  2. As the India Youth Study (2006–2007) on which the present paper is based is not as well known as some other surveys such as National Sample Surveys (NSS) and National Family Health Surveys (NFHS) of India, we have added an appendix (Appendix in Table 9) which provides descriptive statistics of some variables of interest.

  3. Bihar, Jharkhand and Rajasthan are part of the ‘BIMARU’ (meaning diseased) states of India. Jharkhand was carved out of Bihar in the year 2003.

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Acknowledgments

The authors express their gratitude to anonymous reviewer(s) for comments and suggestions on earlier drafts.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. SJM School of Management, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai, Mumbai, 400076, India

    Akanksha Choudhary & Ashish Singh

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  1. Akanksha Choudhary
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  2. Ashish Singh
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Correspondence to Akanksha Choudhary.

Appendix

Appendix

See Table 9.

Table 9 Descriptive statistics: India Youth Study (Females)
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Choudhary, A., Singh, A. Are Daughters Like Mothers: Evidence on Intergenerational Educational Mobility Among Young Females in India. Soc Indic Res 133, 601–621 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-016-1380-8

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