Who goes to school? educational stratification by gender, caste, and ethnicity in Nepal

Comparative Education Review

Volumn 45, Issue 3, 2001, Pages 354-378

  Stash, Sharon ^a   Hannum, Emily ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0035538404     PISSN: 00104086     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/447676     Document Type: Review

References (72)

1. Elizabeth King and M. Anne Hill, Women's Education in Developing Countries (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993); Sharon Stash and S. Phillip Morgan, "Women's Mobility and Basic Education: Community and Family Level Correlates of Primary Schooling in Pakistan, India and Nepal" (unpublished manuscript, University of Pennsylvania, 2001).
2. Elizabeth King and M. Anne Hill, Women's Education in Developing Countries (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993); Sharon Stash and S. Phillip Morgan, "Women's Mobility and Basic Education: Community and Family Level Correlates of Primary Schooling in Pakistan, India and Nepal" (unpublished manuscript, University of Pennsylvania, 2001).
3. In Nepal, as in many regions of India, Hindu caste groups exist among other indigenous ethnic groups. For convenience sake, henceforth in this article we will use the word "caste" to imply the entire range of caste and ethnic groups that currently reside in Nepal. See also Andras Hofer, The Caste Hierarchy and the State in Nepal: A Study of the Muluki Ain of 1854 (Innsbruck: Universitatverlag Wagner, 1979).
4. Steven Brint, Schools and Societies (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Pine Forge, 1998); John Knodel and Gavin W. Jones, "Post-Cairo Population Policy: Does Promoting Girls' Schooling Miss the Mark?" Population and Development Review 22, no. 4 (1996): 683-702; Hans-Peter Blossfeld and Yossi Shavit, "Persisting Barriers: Changes in Educational Opportunities in Thirteen Countries," in Persistent Inequality: Changing Educational Attainment in Thirteen Countries, ed. Yossi Shavit and Hans-Peter Blossfeld (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1993), pp. 1-24; T. Paul Schultz, "Investments in the Schooling and Health of Women and Men: Quantities and Returns," Journal of Human Resources 28, no. 4 (1993): 694-734.
5. Steven Brint, Schools and Societies (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Pine Forge, 1998); John Knodel and Gavin W. Jones, "Post-Cairo Population Policy: Does Promoting Girls' Schooling Miss the Mark?" Population and Development Review 22, no. 4 (1996): 683-702; Hans-Peter Blossfeld and Yossi Shavit, "Persisting Barriers: Changes in Educational Opportunities in Thirteen Countries," in Persistent Inequality: Changing Educational Attainment in Thirteen Countries, ed. Yossi Shavit and Hans-Peter Blossfeld (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1993), pp. 1-24; T. Paul Schultz, "Investments in the Schooling and Health of Women and Men: Quantities and Returns," Journal of Human Resources 28, no. 4 (1993): 694-734.
6. Steven Brint, Schools and Societies (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Pine Forge, 1998); John Knodel and Gavin W. Jones, "Post-Cairo Population Policy: Does Promoting Girls' Schooling Miss the Mark?" Population and Development Review 22, no. 4 (1996): 683-702; Hans-Peter Blossfeld and Yossi Shavit, "Persisting Barriers: Changes in Educational Opportunities in Thirteen Countries," in Persistent Inequality: Changing Educational Attainment in Thirteen Countries, ed. Yossi Shavit and Hans-Peter Blossfeld (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1993), pp. 1-24; T. Paul Schultz, "Investments in the Schooling and Health of Women and Men: Quantities and Returns," Journal of Human Resources 28, no. 4 (1993): 694-734.
7. Steven Brint, Schools and Societies (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Pine Forge, 1998); John Knodel and Gavin W. Jones, "Post-Cairo Population Policy: Does Promoting Girls' Schooling Miss the Mark?" Population and Development Review 22, no. 4 (1996): 683-702; Hans-Peter Blossfeld and Yossi Shavit, "Persisting Barriers: Changes in Educational Opportunities in Thirteen Countries," in Persistent Inequality: Changing Educational Attainment in Thirteen Countries, ed. Yossi Shavit and Hans-Peter Blossfeld (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1993), pp. 1-24; T. Paul Schultz, "Investments in the Schooling and Health of Women and Men: Quantities and Returns," Journal of Human Resources 28, no. 4 (1993): 694-734.
8. For classic reviews of gender and education in the global context, see Nelly P. Stromquist, "Determinants of Educational Participation and Achievement of Women in the Third World: A Review of the Evidence and a Theoretical Critique," Review of Educational Research 59, no. 2 (1989): 143-83; King and Hill. For more recent reviews of gender issues and education in South Asia in the 1990s, see Neera Kuckreja Sohoni, "Women in India," in Women in the Third World: An Encyclopedia of Contemporary Issues, ed. Nelly Stromquist and Karen Monkman (New York: Garland, 1998), pp. 572-82; Madhuri Mathema, "Women in South Asia: Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal," in ibid., pp. 583-92.
9. For classic reviews of gender and education in the global context, see Nelly P. Stromquist, "Determinants of Educational Participation and Achievement of Women in the Third World: A Review of the Evidence and a Theoretical Critique," Review of Educational Research 59, no. 2 (1989): 143-83; King and Hill. For more recent reviews of gender issues and education in South Asia in the 1990s, see Neera Kuckreja Sohoni, "Women in India," in Women in the Third World: An Encyclopedia of Contemporary Issues, ed. Nelly Stromquist and Karen Monkman (New York: Garland, 1998), pp. 572-82; Madhuri Mathema, "Women in South Asia: Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal," in ibid., pp. 583-92.
10. For classic reviews of gender and education in the global context, see Nelly P. Stromquist, "Determinants of Educational Participation and Achievement of Women in the Third World: A Review of the Evidence and a Theoretical Critique," Review of Educational Research 59, no. 2 (1989): 143-83; King and Hill. For more recent reviews of gender issues and education in South Asia in the 1990s, see Neera Kuckreja Sohoni, "Women in India," in Women in the Third World: An Encyclopedia of Contemporary Issues, ed. Nelly Stromquist and Karen Monkman (New York: Garland, 1998), pp. 572-82; Madhuri Mathema, "Women in South Asia: Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal," in ibid., pp. 583-92.
11. Hanna Papanek, "Class and Gender in Education-Employment Linkages," Comparative Education Review 29 (August 1985): 319.
12. Gale Summerfield, "Allocation of Labor and Income," in Stromquist and Monkman, ed., pp. 218-26.
13. Stromquist; Mathema.
14. Mysore Narasimhachar Srinivas, The Changing Position of Indian Women (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 24.
15. Zeba Sathar and Cynthia Lloyd, "Who Gets Primary Schooling in Pakistan: Inequalities among and between Families," Working Paper no. 52 (Population Council, New York, 1993).
16. Meena Acharya, The Status of Women in Nepal: A Critical Review (Kathmandu: Center for Economic Development and Administration, 1979).
17. Gajendra Man Shrestha, Sri Ram Lamichhane, Bijaya Kumar Thapa, Roshan Chitrakar, Michael Useem, and John Comings, "Determinants of Educational Participation in Rural Nepal," Comparative Education Review 30, no. 4 (1986): 508-22.
18. Jacqueline A. Ashby, "Equity and Discrimination among Children: Schooling Decisions in Rural Nepal," Comparative Education Review 29, no. 1 (1985): 47-67; Dean T. Jamison and Marlaine E. Lockheed, "Participation in Schooling: Determinants and Learning Outcomes in Nepal," Economic Development and Cultural Change 35, no. 2 (1987): 279-306.
19. Jacqueline A. Ashby, "Equity and Discrimination among Children: Schooling Decisions in Rural Nepal," Comparative Education Review 29, no. 1 (1985): 47-67; Dean T. Jamison and Marlaine E. Lockheed, "Participation in Schooling: Determinants and Learning Outcomes in Nepal," Economic Development and Cultural Change 35, no. 2 (1987): 279-306.
20. Jamison and Lockheed.
21. Ashby.
22. Ernestine L. McHugh, "Dialogue, Structure, and Change in Himalayan Anthropology: A Review Article," Comparative Studies in Society and History 34, no. 3 (1992): 552-59.
23. Sherry B. Ortner, High Religion: A Cultural and Political History of Sherpa Buddhism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989).
24. Herbert L. Smith and Paul P. Cheung, "Trends in the Effects of Family Background on Educational Attainment in the Philippines," American Journal of Sociology 91, no. 6 (1986): 1387-1408.
25. Emily Hannum, "Ethnic Differences in Basic Education in Reform-Era Rural China" (paper presented at the American Sociological Association meeting, Chicago, August 1999); Emily Hannum and Yu Xie, "Ethnic Stratification in Northwest China: Occupational Differences between Han Chinese and National Minorities in Xinjiang, 1982-1990," Demography 35, no. 3 (1998): 323-33.
26. Emily Hannum, "Ethnic Differences in Basic Education in Reform-Era Rural China" (paper presented at the American Sociological Association meeting, Chicago, August 1999); Emily Hannum and Yu Xie, "Ethnic Stratification in Northwest China: Occupational Differences between Han Chinese and National Minorities in Xinjiang, 1982-1990," Demography 35, no. 3 (1998): 323-33.
27. Bam Dev Sharda, Status Attainment in Rural India (Delhi: Ajanta, 1977).
28. Sharda, p. 65.
29. Ehsanul Haq, "Open Education in a Closed Society: A Study in Social and Educational Inequalities in Contemporary India," in Social Stratification, ed. Dipankar Gupta (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 461.
30. Jamison and Lockheed (n. 12 above).
31. Ashby (n. 12 above), p. 79.
32. For example, see Shrestha et al. (n. 11 above); this major analysis of educational participation in Nepal failed to investigate caste as a potential determinant.
33. Nominal variables defined on the basis of existing theory and literature have been used in studies of mortality and with national data sets. See Norman Y. Luther and Shyam Thapa, "Infant and Child Mortality in Nepal" East-West Center Working Paper, Population Series no. 105 (East-West Center, Honolulu, 1999);
34. Minja K. Choe, Robert D. Retherford, Bhakta B. Gubhaju, and Shyam Thapa, "Ethnic Differentials in Early Childhood Mortality in Nepal," Journal of Biosocial Science 21, no. 2 (1989): 223-33. In the present study we employ a similar set of caste and ethnic groups based in theory; we also examine and reduce the number of categories through a series of descriptive and multivariate statistical techniques.
35. For comparative ethnographic literature, we refer in particular to Dor B. Bista, People of Nepal (Kathmandu: Ratna Pustak Bhandar, 1967); C. von Furer-Haimendorf, Caste and Kin in Nepal, India and Ceylon (Bombay: Asia, 1966); Rajesh Gautam and Ashoke K. Thapa-Magar, Tribal Ethnography of Nepal, 2 vols. (Delhi: Book Faith India, 1994).
36. For comparative ethnographic literature, we refer in particular to Dor B. Bista, People of Nepal (Kathmandu: Ratna Pustak Bhandar, 1967); C. von Furer-Haimendorf, Caste and Kin in Nepal, India and Ceylon (Bombay: Asia, 1966); Rajesh Gautam and Ashoke K. Thapa-Magar, Tribal Ethnography of Nepal, 2 vols. (Delhi: Book Faith India, 1994).
37. For comparative ethnographic literature, we refer in particular to Dor B. Bista, People of Nepal (Kathmandu: Ratna Pustak Bhandar, 1967); C. von Furer-Haimendorf, Caste and Kin in Nepal, India and Ceylon (Bombay: Asia, 1966); Rajesh Gautam and Ashoke K. Thapa-Magar, Tribal Ethnography of Nepal, 2 vols. (Delhi: Book Faith India, 1994).
38. Lynne Bennett, Dangerous Wives and Sacred Sisters: Social and Symbolic Roles of High-Caste Women in Nepal (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983); Lynne Bennett and Meena Acharya, The Status of Women in Nepal: An Aggregate Analysis and Summary of Eight Village Studies (Kathmandu: Center for Economic Development and Administration, Tribhuvan University, 1981).
39. Lynne Bennett, Dangerous Wives and Sacred Sisters: Social and Symbolic Roles of High-Caste Women in Nepal (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983); Lynne Bennett and Meena Acharya, The Status of Women in Nepal: An Aggregate Analysis and Summary of Eight Village Studies (Kathmandu: Center for Economic Development and Administration, Tribhuvan University, 1981).
40. David Seddon, Nepal: A State of Poverty (New Delhi: Vikas, 1987).
41. Bennett and Acharya.
42. We include a small group of Muslims in the Terai caste group. Census data suggests that there is a small minority of Muslims living in the Terai (less than 2 percent); however, Muslims also live in other regions of the country. We collapse Muslims with Terai ethnic groups because they are typically considered to be socially conservative, particularly with respect to women. We similarly justified this decision through various descriptive analyses and statistical tests of nested models (with and without a dummy variable for Muslims) using likelihood ratio χ2 tests.
43. S. P. Morgan and B. Niraula, "Gender Inequality and Fertility in Two Nepali Villages," Population and Development Review 21, no. 3 (1995): 541-61; Shara Neidell, Bhanu B. Niraula, S. Phillip Morgan, and Sharon Stash, "Muslim and Non-Muslim Differences in the Eastern Tarai of Nepal," Contributions to Nepalese Studies 26 (August).
44. S. P. Morgan and B. Niraula, "Gender Inequality and Fertility in Two Nepali Villages," Population and Development Review 21, no. 3 (1995): 541-61; Shara Neidell, Bhanu B. Niraula, S. Phillip Morgan, and Sharon Stash, "Muslim and Non-Muslim Differences in the Eastern Tarai of Nepal," Contributions to Nepalese Studies 26 (August).
45. Louis Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).
46. Kim P. Sebaly, "Nepal," in World Education Encyclopedia, ed. George Thomas Kurian, vol. 2 (New York: Facts on File, 1988), p. 905.
47. Kedar N. Shrestha, "Nepal," in Handbook of World Education, ed. Walter Wickremasinghe (Houston: American Collegiate Service, 1992), p. 569.
48. T. R. Khaniya and M. A. Kiernan, "Nepal," in International Encyclopedia of National Systems of Education, ed. T. Neville Postlethwaite, 2d ed. (Tarrytown, N.Y.: Elsevier Science, 1995), p. 693. In 1991, the government announced that free education would be expanded to the sixth grade (p. 694).
49. Shrestha, p. 565.
50. Ibid.
51. Shrestha et al. (n. 11 above).
52. T. R. Khaniya and M. A. Kiernan, "Nepal: System of Education," in International Encyclopedia of Education, ed. Torsten Husén and T. Neville Postlethwaite, 2d ed. (Tarrytown, N.Y.: Elsevier Science, 1994), p. 4062.
53. Variation in timing of entrance is illustrated in the substantially lower ever-enrollment rates among 7-year-olds than among 15-year-olds (NFS; our estimates).
54. The NFS data provide an indirect confirmation of slow progression through primary school. For example, among 10-year-old first-grade graduates in the NFS, 23 percent had not yet completed second grade. Among corresponding 11-year-olds, 14 percent had not completed second grade. The figure fell to 2.4 percent among 15-year-old first-grade graduates; http://unescostat.unesco.org.
55. Sebaly; Khaniya and Kiernan, "Nepal: System of Education," p. 4062.
56. Jamison and Lockheed (n. 12 above).
57. Shrestha et al., p. 509.
58. Among urban 15-year-old children, 85 percent had ever enrolled in school and 74 percent had completed a primary education. Among rural 15-year-olds, 61 percent had ever enrolled in school and 40 percent had completed primary school. The rural figures dominate national patterns because, as the estimates from the Central Bureau of Statistics for 1993 suggest, the vast majority of Nepalese (93 percent) reside in rural areas.
59. Household weights provided by the DHS were adjusted so that the sample would represent all households (i.e., the DHS design household weight was multiplied by 1/total number of children in the household).
60. This sample (including 80.2 percent of the sample of all children listed on the household questionnaire) was selected because we were interested in the effect of parental characteristics and household composition on the educational enrollment and attainment of children. Because of the structure of the NFS household listing, information on parents could be matched to that on their children most closely within nuclear family units in which fathers (or mothers) were listed as household heads. Reporting is also more likely to be accurate when household heads are providing information on their own children, than when they are reporting on other less proximately related, or unrelated, children living in their household. However, a sample of children of household heads is biased by the exclusion of more complex household structures that occur with some frequency in South Asian cultures. For example, households where sons and their families reside with a senior generation household head are excluded, as are households in which multiple brothers and their families coreside. In addition, we excluded children who are more distantly related to the household head, and unrelated children. We compared data from children of household heads with that of all children listed in households to look for evidence of systematic differences, but we found that the sample of children of household heads differed little from the sample of all children in households on these characteristics.
61. In practice, therefore, we analyzed data on all children reported by household heads in the family listing regardless of their usual residence or their residence the previous night. In the case of the present analysis, this definition of coresidence offered advantages over the more commonly used definition of de facto coresidence. In Nepal, schools of reasonably good quality are not universally available. Children's residence can be the outcome of an educational decision should families decide to send their children to live with relatives in regions of the country that are better equipped with educational facilities, including boarding schools.
62. For literature on Nepal, see, esp., Bista (n. 26 above); von Furer-Haimendorf (n. 26 above). The information lost by not using a more detailed caste code was tested in a series of replications of the models used in this article, including caste codes of various specificity. The caste code used here was determined on the basis of model comparisons and test statistics that most efficiently captured key relationships in the data without loss of substantive meaning.
63. We include birth order rather than sibship size because birth order is time-invariant, while sibship size may have changed between the time that the child entered primary school and the time of the survey. At one point in our analysis, we included a variable on total children in the household (at the time of the survey) with a goal of understanding the sensitivity of model coefficients to sibship size variable. The inclusion of variables for total children and birth order had very little effect on model coefficients relative to those estimated when only birth order was included in the model.
64. Because the sample of 15-year-olds is now relatively small, we included regions rather than district-level geographical controls in order to save degrees of freedom. A variable representing nine subregions was tested for inclusion in the model; however, likelihood ratio χ2 tests indicated no improvement in model fit over models with the variable representing only the four major developmental regions.
65. See also United Nations, The World's Women 1995: Trends and Statistics, Social Statistics and Indicators series K, no. 12 (New York: United Nations, 1995).
66. In figs. 2 and 4, there is a slight leveling of the trend in primary school completion. In 1979, the youngest people in the sample are 15 years of age. By age 15, the majority of children have completed their primary schooling. However, some additional children continue to complete their primary education at later ages; hence, the slight leveling in the predicted probability of completing primary schooling between 1974 and 1979.
67. Seddon (n. 28 above).
68. For a similar methodology, see Stephen E. Fienberg and William M. Mason, "Identification and Estimation of Age-Period-Cohort Models in the Analysis of Discrete Archival Data," in Sociological Methodology 1979 (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1979).
69. Interaction terms were included in the final model on the basis of likelihood ratio χ2 tests between nested models (with and without each of the interaction terms). Because of the large sample size, Bayesian Information Criterion approximations were also estimated to compare the same nested pairs of models. The interaction terms included in the model were also shown to contribute on the basis of this more stringent criterion. See Adrian Raftery, "Choosing Models for Cross-Classification," American Sociological Review 51, no. 1 (1986): 145-46.
70. Seddon.
71. Claudia Buchmann and Emily Hannum, "Education and Stratification in Developing Countries: A Review of Theories and Research," Annual Review of Sociology 27 (2001), in press.
72. McHugh (n. 15 above).