Occupational classes and inequality in educational expenditures: Reproduction of social hierarchy through school education

Abstract

We examine the role of educational expenditure in reproducing social hierarchy by focusing on occupational segmentation in India. Studies show quality of schools vary by medium of instruction (English/vernacular) and type of management (private/government) in terms of skills they impart to students. While these skills improve the prospects for students’ future upward mobility, educational expenditures vary across school types, with ‘better’ quality schools being more expensive. Educational expenditure is an important channel that shapes the pattern of school participation, which, in turn, may affect patterns of future mobility for children belonging to households located in a hierarchical occupational structure. Using data on school education and household occupational structure for 2007–08 and 2017–18, we classify schools based on their medium-of-instruction and type-of-management, and rank household types in terms of their primary occupation. Given the high economic growth and expansion of schooling opportunities during this period, an improvement in participation of low-ranked household types in ‘better’ schools may be expected, which may improve their future mobility prospects. Using a logistic regression framework, we, however, find that the correspondence between hierarchies of school-types and occupations has largely sustained, crucially mediated by educational expenditures incurred by households. Further investigation shows inequality in educational expenditures between household types has strengthened over this period. A decomposition of educational expenditures across household types shows that while some of the difference in expenditures is explained by the household characteristics in terms of their caste, religion, and educational status, the major part is attributed to differential returns to these characteristics that households reap due to their social positions. Given the structural nature of some of these characteristics, the inequality is likely to continue, thereby sustaining the correspondence between school and occupation types, which, in turn, is likely to reproduce the pattern of occupational and social hierarchy in India.