Measurement of Educational Disparities in Punjab (Pakistan): An Analysis from MICS’s Micro-data

Abstract

The primary objective of this research study is to calculate education index at household level and to estimate the education disparities for all districts of Punjab by using MICS microdata and to devise empirical analysis for investigating the relationship between educational attainment, income and educational disparities in Punjab. We have used educational attainment, reading-ability and writing-ability as indicators to estimate education index at household level. While Gini-coefficient, Atkinson index and Generalised entropy are used to estimate the educational disparities. The districts, Rawalpindi and Chakwal, score highest education index value 0.78 and 0.74 respectively. In Punjab, most unequal education distribution is observed in district Rajanpur while least unequal distribution in Chakwal, with Ginicoefficient 0.51 and 0.21 respectively. The districts with lower education (like Rajanpur, DG Khan, RY Khan) are facing higher rural-urban education gaps. The estimates show the strong correlation between income and education indices. Income (permanent) affect positively and education disparities affect inversely to the education attainment. Further, education disparity (education Gini) decreases as average education attainment (education index) rises. It has also been observed that the education disparities in low income districts is most likely to be worse than that of the high income districts of Punjab. Furthermore, a positive association between income inequalities and education disparities exists. Moreover, the districts with higher gender disparities are facing higher education inequalities with in society, while districts with less gender related education inequalities are enjoying more equal distribution of education. Likewise, at higher rural-urban differences educational Gini would also be higher, as ruralurban gap reduces and move towards equality at start education disparities reduces at slower rate but after a point it decline sharply. This study also concludes that education disparities are higher among Saraiki speaking districts (Southern Punjab).