Three empirical essays on child education: Using data from India

This thesis empirically addresses some of the issues underlying the low levels of schooling and high levels of child labor faced by developing countries, especially India. The first chapter looks at the interdependence of sibling activities. The results show that the custom of sending the eldest child to work is negatively associated with the schooling probabilities of younger children. The negative association is stronger for younger female siblings as compared to males. The second chapter uses the tools of discrete-survival analysis to investigate what drives the variation in odds of dropping out over completed grades for out of school children, especially, the increase in the drop out rates before making a transition to middle level of schooling. The main finding is that high direct costs of higher level of schooling and low levels of parental education impact the odds of dropping out non proportionally over the grades. The impact on the odds is highest at the completion of primary level of schooling. The third chapter investigates the impact of school achievement for school age children. It makes a distinction between children from village/towns with 1 primary school and those with more than 1 primary school. Results suggest that only government ownership of schools is negatively associated with the development of all three skills (math/reading/writing) in both the subsamples.