Intergenerational Transmission of Education in India: Evidence from a Nationwide Survey

Abstract

The intergenerational transmission of education has been investigated extensively in social science research. The existing literature shows that none of the studies in India related the process of partner selection and differential fertility with the intergenerational transmission of education. Here, we examined the timing of marriage and childbearing along with the probability of partner selection, according to education of women and how these processes lead to heterogeneity in educational attainment of children. The educational attainment of children was estimated by fitting the estimated marriage probabilities and children ever born in the intergenerational transmission model. The results were replicated in different random samples to examine its validity. The study found that higher educated women marry late, have fewer children, and marry men with higher or equal education. Further, the results indicate that education of women is a more significant predictor than education of husband in reducing average number of children born to couples. The findings confirm that children attain higher education than their parents, and better educated mothers do not discriminate between their children to provide higher education. These findings reinforce the significance of government initiatives to provide incentives to families with higher educated girls to ensure better education of the next generation.