The learning curve: Why college education for women matters

The correlation between districts with college-educated women and multidimensional poverty was very high for 10 of 12 indicators

Earlier this week, NITI Aayog released the state-wise National Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), in line with the global index released by the United Nations each year. Although the National Family Health Survey 2015-16 forms the basis of the data — NFHS 2019-21 results are not entirely out yet — the report is the first attempt in years to define poverty measures.

The report, based on three counts — health, education and standard of living — found that a quarter of the population in the country was multidimensionally poor or deprived on at least a few of the 12 counts. Under the health category, the uncensored headcount ratio or the number of households lacking adequate nutrition was 37.6 per cent. A household is considered deprived if any child between the ages of 0 and 59 months, or woman between the ages of 15 and 49 years, or man between the ages of 15 and 54 years is found to be undernourished. Also, 2.7 per cent of the households had been affected by child-adolescent mortality, and 22.6 per cent did not have adequate maternal health. Under the standard of living banner, the uncensored count ratio was 58.48 per cent, 51.97 per cent and 45.65 per cent for cooking fuel, sanitation and housing, respectively.

Only 9.66 per cent of households did not have a bank account, and 13.97 per cent did not have any assets. The report does not highlight the reason or cause for deprivations. A Business Standard analysis found that education is a big factor in determining deprivation and, importantly, female education played an essential role in deciding the level of deprivation or lack of access to resources.

Although earlier research has shown that even basic levels of education have helped improve access to services, analysis of district-wise data across the country highlights that female college education played a significant role in ensuring access to services. Meanwhile, literacy did not have a significant impact on improving access.

District-wise data is derived from Census 2011 data, whereas headcount ratios for the 12 indicators are available in the latest MPI report. The correlation between districts with college-educated females and multidimensional poverty was very high for 10 of the 12 indicators.

Availability of bank accounts and drinking water were the only two indicators where college education played no role in determining access to resources. And, the government has been able to dispense benefits of the schemes across the population.

Nutrition, years of schooling, school attendance and housing were also correlated with the proportion of college-educated males in a district. But the correlation with a female college education was higher for all these indicators.

What does it mean?

A higher correlation means that the deprivations across different categories increase when the proportion of college-educated females decreases. For instance, as the proportion of college graduates decreased, so did the households with adequate nutrition. Similarly, a dip in college education across districts also meant a fall in access to sanitation, cooking fuel usage, electricity, and housing availability.

According to Census 2011 data, there were 2.22 per cent college-educated females in the country who were either graduates or above. Our analysis found that in districts where college-educated females were higher than 2.22 per cent of the population, 29.7 per cent of the households were deprived of adequate nutrition, lower than the national average deprivation of 36.6 per cent. In contrast, in districts where college education females were less than 2.22 per cent, 42.3 per cent of the people lacked adequate nutrition.

A household is deprived if not even one member of the household aged 10 years or older has completed six years of schooling. On average, 13.7 per cent of the households were deprived in the years of schooling category. In districts where college-educated females were lower than average (2.22 per cent), 18.4 per cent of households were deprived. In contrast, the corresponding ratio for districts that had higher-than-average graduate women was 8.4 per cent.

In terms of electricity access, while the average deprivation was 11.1 per cent, lower-than-average districts had 15.9 per cent of households deprived of electric supply. In contrast, only 5.2 per cent of the households in higher female-educated districts lacked electricity.

The All India Survey of Higher Education report released last year shows that female enrolment in higher education had increased 18 per cent between 2015-16 and 2019-20. Around 18.9 million women were enrolled in higher education programmes across the country in 2019-20.