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The narrative of rising inequality in the post-liberalisation era resonates strongly in public discourse in India. But this discourse dwells largely on equality of outcomes, sidestepping the issue of equality of opportunity.
One way to look at the degree of opportunity in a society is to examine intergenerational mobility. Intergenerational mobility examines the relationship between the socio-economic status of parents and the socio-economic outcomes of the adult child. If there is a strong relationship between an individual's education, occupation and income and those of his parents, then outcomes in one generation affect the opportunities available to the next. In societies with high levels of inequality of opportunity, children born in poor households will struggle to rise above poverty.
Various studies have estimated intergenerational education mobility in India to examine the degree to which educational outcomes of children reflect the unequal opportunities that individuals inherit from their parents. According to a study by Viktoria Hnatkovskay, Amartya Lahiriy, and Sourabh Paul, education mobility in India has over the past decades increased across all social groups.
Data show that intergenerational persistence of illiteracy has declined over the past decades for all social groups. In 1983, 85 per cent of the children of illiterate non SC/ST parents remained illiterate, while in 2004-05, this fell to 79 per cent. For SC/STs, the corresponding numbers were 91 per cent and 87 per cent respectively. A large part of the upward intergenerational education mobility was due to children born to illiterate parents rising up the education ladder. Other studies also attest that upward education mobility is not limited to more educated households, but is a more pervasive phenomenon.
But, higher education levels do not necessarily translate to better learning outcomes. As studies such as the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) show, learning outcomes, especially in government schools are worse than a few years ago.
UP THE LADDER
The transition matrices on the right show the percentage of children who have attained a particular education level, corresponding to their parent's education level. Each row of the transition matrices represents the education level of the parent, while the columns indicate the education level of the child. Thus, 'Edu1' in the top-left panel of the table says that in 1983, 85 per cent of the adult male children of illiterate non-SC/ST parents remained illiterate, nine per cent acquired some education, five per cent finished primary school, one per cent had middle school education, and almost none had secondary school education.
