Social divisions in school participation and attainment in India: 1983-2004

This study documents the size and nature of Hindu-Muslim and boy-girl gaps in children's school participation and attainments in India. Individual-level data from two successive rounds of the National Sample Survey suggest that considerable progress has been made in decreasing the Hindu-Muslim gap. Nonetheless, the gap remains sizeable even after controlling for numerous socio-economic and parental covariates, and the Muslim educational disadvantage in India today is greater than that experienced by girls and Scheduled Caste Hindu children. A gender gap still appears within and between communities, though it is smaller within Muslim communities. While differences in gender and other demographic and socio-economic covariates have recently become more important in explaining the Hindu-Muslim gap, those differences altogether explain only 25% to 45% of the observed schooling gap.