Estimating wealth effects without expenditure data—or tears: An application to educational enrollments in states of India
2001/02/01 by Deon Filmer, Lant Pritchett, Lant H. Pritchett · 5,241 citations
Mathematics · Social Sciences · #Asset (computer security) #Demographic economics #Demography #Econometrics #Economic growth #Economics #Geography #Income, Poverty, and Inequality #Index (typography) #Mathematics #Per capita #Population #Poverty #Poverty, Education, and Child Welfare #Proxy (statistics) #School Choice and Performance #Socioeconomics #Statistics #Uttar pradesh
paper · pdf · doi:10.1353/dem.2001.0003
published in Demography 38(1), 115-132 (Springer Science+Business Media)
openalex publication_date 2001/02/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Abstract
Using data from India, we estimate the relationship between household wealth and children's school enrollment. We proxy wealth by constructing a linear index from asset ownership indicators, using principal-components analysis to derive weights. In Indian data this index is robust to the assets included, and produces internally coherent results. State-level results correspond well to independent data on per capita output and poverty. To validate the method and to show that the asset index predicts enrollments as accurately as expenditures, or more so, we use data sets from Indonesia, Pakistan, and Nepal that contain information on both expenditures and assets. The results show large, variable wealth gaps in children's enrollment across Indian states. On average a "rich" child is 31 percentage points more likely to be enrolled than a "poor" child, but this gap varies from only 4.6 percentage points in Kerala to 38.2 in Uttar Pradesh and 42.6 in Bihar.
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