 Do IT service centers promote school enrollment? Evidence from IndiaEmily Oster and Bryce Steinberg Journal of Development Economics, 2013, vol. 104, issue C, 123-135 Abstract: Globalization has changed job opportunities in much of the developing world. In India, outsourcing has created a new class of high-skill jobs which have increased overall returns to schooling. Existing evidence suggests education may broadly respond to this change. We use microdata to evaluate the impact of these jobs on local school enrollment in areas outside of major IT centers. We merge panel data on school enrollment from a comprehensive school-level administrative dataset with detailed data on Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES) center location and founding dates. Using school fixed effects, we find that introducing a new ITES center causes a 5% increase in the number of children enrolled in primary school; this effect is localized to within a few kilometers. We show the effect is driven by English-language schools, consistent with the claim that the impacts are due to changes in returns to schooling, and is not driven by changes in population or income resulting from the ITES center. Supplementary survey evidence suggests that the localization of the effects is driven by limited information diffusion. Keywords: India; Call centers; Education; Outsourcing (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:deveco:v:104:y:2013:i:c:p:123-135 DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2013.05.006 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Development Economics is currently edited by M. R. Rosenzweig More articles in Journal of Development Economics from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.