Educational Investment Responses to Economic Opportunity: Evidence from Indian Road Construction

Anjali Adukia, Samuel Asher and Paul Novosad

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: The rural poor in developing countries, once economically isolated, are increasingly being connected to regional markets. Whether these new connections crowd out or encourage educational investment is a central question. We examine the impacts on educational choices of 115,000 new roads built under India's flagship road construction program. We find that children stay in school longer and perform better on standardized exams. Treatment heterogeneity supports the predictions of a standard human capital investment model: enrollment increases are largest where nearby labor markets offer the highest returns to education and lowest where they imply high opportunity costs of schooling.

Keywords: Education; Roads; India; Human capital; labor demand shocks; infrastructure; development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I25 J24 O18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-edu, nep-tre and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Educational Investment Responses to Economic Opportunity: Evidence from Indian Road Construction (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:80194

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