The State of School Infrastructure in the Assembly Constituencies of Rural India: Analysis of 11 Census Indicators from Pre-Primary to Higher Education

Akshay Swaminathan, Menaka Narayanan, Jeff Blossom, R. Venkataramanan, Sujata Saunik, Rockli Kim and S. V. Subramanian
Additional contact information
Akshay Swaminathan: Quantitative Sciences, Flatiron Health, New York, NY 10013, USA
Menaka Narayanan: Palantir Technologies, New York, NY 10014, USA
Jeff Blossom: Center for Geographic Analysis, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
R. Venkataramanan: Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG), University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK
Sujata Saunik: Additional Chief Secretary, Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Department, Mumbai 400021, India
Rockli Kim: Division of Health Policy and Management, College of Health Sciences, Korea University, Seoul 02841, Korea
S. V. Subramanian: Harvard Center for Population & Development Studies, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 1, 1-20

Abstract: In India, assembly constituencies (ACs), represented by elected officials, are the primary geopolitical units for state-level policy development. However, data on social indicators are traditionally reported and analyzed at the district level, and are rarely available for ACs. Here, we combine village-level data from the 2011 Indian Census and AC shapefiles to systematically derive AC-level estimates for the first time. We apply this methodology to describe the distribution of 11 education infrastructures—ranging from pre-primary school to senior secondary school—across rural villages in 3773 ACs. We found high variability in access to higher education infrastructures and low variability in access to lower education variables. For 40.3% (25th percentile) to 79.7% (75th percentile) of villages in an AC, the nearest government senior secondary school was >5 km away, whereas the nearest government primary school was >5 km away in just 0% (25th percentile) to 1.9% (75th percentile) of villages in an AC. The states of Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, and Bihar showed the greatest within-state variation in access to education infrastructures. We present a novel analysis of access to education infrastructure to inform AC-level policy, and demonstrate how geospatial and Census data can be leveraged to derive AC-level estimates for any population health and development indicators collected in the Census at the village level.

Keywords: India; assembly constituencies; geopolitical units; GIS; census; education infrastructures; social determinants of health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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