Nexus of multidimensional poverty and educational deprivation among the social groups: Evidence from a developing country

Abstract

The interface between the incidence of multidimensional poverty and its fallout on educational deprivation is often debated in the realm of human development perspective. The paper aims to explore the nexus of multidimensional poverty and educational deprivation among the households belonging to different social groups, namely Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), Other Backward Castes (OBC), and Forward Castes (FC) in rural areas of a developing country, India (Gaur & Rao, 2020). A decomposition analysis within the human development framework using primary data from selected regions of India, namely Kerala, West Bengal, and Bihar, is attempted to explore whether there is any deprivation gap in education in the selected regions. The multidimensional poverty and educa-tional deprivation of select states are analysed using the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) developed by Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiatives (OPHI) (Alkire & Foster, 2011; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2022; PIB Delhi, 2020; Ballon & Krishnakumar, 2010). The study identified the determinants of educational deprivation and its nexus with the multidimensional poverty of the households belonging to the social groups of rural India. The paper highlights the influence of disproportional attainment of education, which worsens deprivation leading to unequal outcomes of human development among the different social groups of rural India. The discussion further unfolds the incidence of disproportional multidimensional poverty among social groups in rural India that enables the explanation of the policy implications and interventions in educational entitlements.