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Family, community, and educational outcomes in South Asia

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Abstract

In this article, we review research on the economics and sociology of education to assess the relationships between family and community variables and children’s educational outcomes in South Asia. At the family level, we examine the variables of family socioeconomic status (SES), parental education, family structure, and religion and caste. At the community level, we assess the limited research on the relationships between economic, cultural, and social characteristics and children’s educational outcomes. The literature presents several consistent relationships between the roles of family and community characteristics in determining educational outcomes and reveals several possibilities for further research.

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  1. More frequent data collection initiatives, better access to computing power, and a growing emphasis on evidence-based policymaking are some of the reasons for these recent developments. Fuller (1986) is an example of another comprehensive but dated review of the literature on the determinants of schooling outcomes in Asia and other developing regions.

  2. Most recently attempts have been made to collect internationally comparable learning data in India, but such information is still not available on a national scale (Das and Zajonc 2008). Leading researchers are now making important strides in this area of work, however. For instance, most recently the journal Education Economics devoted an entire issue to quality education in South Asia (Kingdon and Riboud 2009). This literature on learning outcomes is still under development in the South Asian context but it is much more developed in areas outside this region (for a broader literature review see Chudgar and Luschei 2009).

  3. Furthermore, though it is known that family- and community-level characteristics are intertwined and affect each other, researchers find it hard to separate family from community influences, and vice versa. It is also worth noting that educational outcomes can affect family and community characteristics. For example, high-performing children can encourage their parents to get more education or to initiate community-improvement programs. However, no research on these topics has been conducted in South Asia.

  4. According to data compiled by economists Barro and Lee (2001), between 1960 and 2000 the average years of education of adult men and women in South Asia increased significantly, with the exception of Afghanistan. Improvements in average educational attainment in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal are particularly modest: average attainment increased from about 1 year in 1960 to less than 3 years in 2000. The increases in India and Pakistan are better: from 2 years of education in 1960 to 4 years of education in 2000. In any given year, Sri Lanka’s average educational attainment has been far larger than in other South Asian countries: from 4 years in 1960 to 7 years in 2000. Regarding the gender gaps in the average educational attainment of adults, larger pro-male gaps persist in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan—greater than 1 year of education. In Burma and Sri Lanka, the pro-male gender gaps are smaller—less than 1 year. In Nepal in the early 1960s and 1970s there was no gender gap because the educational attainments of both men and women were nearly zero; over time, Nepal’s pro-male gender gaps became similar to those in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan.

  5. In a different context, using data for 22 countries from the Demographic and Health Survey, Desai and Alva (1998) showed that the relationship between a mother’s education and her children’s health outcomes was uniformly reduced once the researchers accounted for the father’s education, various socio-economic status indicators, and location. Thus they call into question the causal link between maternal education and children’s well-being.

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  1. College of Education, Michigan State University, 426 Erickson Hall, East Lansing, MI, 48824, USA

    Amita Chudgar

  2. School of Education, University of Pittsburgh, 5907 Posvar Hall, 230 S. Bouquet Street, Pittsburgh, PA, 15260, USA

    M. Najeeb Shafiq

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Chudgar, A., Shafiq, M.N. Family, community, and educational outcomes in South Asia. Prospects 40, 517–534 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11125-010-9169-z

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