Intra-Household Gender Discrimination in Schooling and Private Tutorial Spending

Educational outcomes indicate high dropout rate and low average years of education and low enrollment rate for girls relative to boys, which persists due to the higher valuation of sons, socially and economically, and hence a difference in the investment made on girl and boy child in a patrilineal society like India. Although, pro-male bias in the intra-household allocation of education expenditure has been extensively studied, rarely has been gender discrimination analysed separately in schooling decision and private tutoring decision, the later also known as the shadow education system. This paper uses a two-part Hurdle model to identify the extent of gender bias in school enrollment and schooling expense, conditioned on being enrolled in school and similarly, in private tutorial enrollment and private tutoring expense.

The paper finds significant gender bias in favour of boys in the school enrollment of middle and secondary school children and substantially high pro-boy bias in school spending among secondary school children. Tuition enrollment chances among school going children go in favour of boys across the primary, middle and secondary school and in fact the extent of disparity increases over the levels of schooling. Conditioned on both girl and boy being enrolled in private tuition, the paper finds a significant difference in tuition spending between girls and boys of primary school and of secondary school.