The Learning Poverty Count (LPC) and Learning Poverty Gap (LPG) in Rural Primary Education

Great strides have been made in India’s primary school enrollment, which is now nearly universal for both boys and girls at elementary level. Yet, both cross-country evidence and evidence from India suggests that educational outcomes are incommensurate with years of schooling: learning lags attending, as it were (Pritchett, 2013; Das and Zajonc, 2010; Singh, 2014).Here we present estimates of learning outcomes drawing parallels from the poverty measurement literature. Specifically, we estimate a learning poverty headcount (LPC) as well as a learning poverty gap (LPG). The LPC simply measures the number of children who do not meet the basic learning benchmark, whereas the LPG additionally takes into account how far each student is from the benchmark. In other words, the LPG measures the gap between the the basic learning benchmark and the average scores of those students who did not meet the benchmark.aSuch estimates are rendered possible by the Annual Survey of Education Reports (ASER) that have over time tested a sample of children between the ages of 5 and 16, residing in rural India. Students are tested in terms of a set of tasks in reading and arithmetic, which have remained constant over time. In a sense, these tests amount to an absolutely minimal or basic level of educational attainment–akin to the poverty or subsistence line. Specifically, we chose this line as being able to read a simple story (in the local language), and being able to do subtraction – roughly meeting the passing standard for grade 3. For the present analysis, we focus on children between in grades 3 through 8.Figures 1 and 2 illustrate how India has fared on these two metrics. The findings are stark. On math and reading, India’s absolute LPC is between 40 and 50 percent: in other words, roughly 40-50 percent of children in rural India in grades 3 to 8 cannot meet the fairly basic learning standard (Figure 1). Discouragingly, this poverty count score rises over time, substantially in the case of math. There is some consolation that since 2014 has the trend started to show some improvement; and also consolation that at least there are no significant differences in the LPC for boys and girls.

How do students perform as they progress through grades? Figure 3 plots the proportion of students in each grade who meet the grade 2 learning benchmark (the vertical distance from the horizontal black line). Unsurprisingly, in higher grades a larger proportion of students meet this basic benchmark. However, as students move to higher grades, the learning benchmark should also increase. While the ASER data does not allow us to directly compute it, the dashed green line is a hypothetical representation of the grade specific benchmark. Using this grade-appropriate poverty line, it is clear that learning levels of children in rural India are far below where they should be. It is sobering enough that learning poverty counts are around 40 percent, roughly where India’s consumption poverty numbers were in the 1970s. But if technology going forward is going to be even more human capital intensive as current trends suggest (dotted yellow line), the wedge between the opportunities offered to the future labour force and the capabilities to take advantage of them will widen even further. That is the true magnitude of India’s human capital How do students perform as they progress through grades? Figure 3 plots the proportion of students in each grade who meet the grade 2 learning benchmark (the vertical distance from the horizontal black line). Unsurprisingly, in higher grades a larger proportion of students meet this basic benchmark. However, as students move to higher grades, the learning benchmark should also increase. While the ASER data does not allow us to directly compute it, the dashed green line is a hypothetical representation of the grade specific benchmark. Using this grade-appropriate poverty line, it is clear that learning levels of children in rural India are far below where they should be. It is sobering enough that learning poverty counts are around 40 percent, roughly where India’s consumption poverty numbers were in the 1970s. But if technology going forward is going to be even more human capital intensive as current trends suggest (dotted yellow line), the wedge between the opportunities offered to the future labour force and the capabilities to take advantage of them will widen even further. That is the true magnitude of India’s human capital challenge.