Schooling Investments over Three Decades in Rural Tamil Nadu, India: Changing Effects of Income, Gender, and Adult Family Members’ Education

SummaryThis article explores the changing determinants of schooling investments from 1971 to 2003 in Tamil Nadu, India, using pooled and panel data of farming households. We find that the high correlation between children’s attainment of basic schooling and the household’s assets for farming disappeared during the mid-1980s. However, even after the mid-1980s, the attainment of advanced education is still affected by rainfall and thus by farm income, indicating the lack of insurance markets and the segregation of poor households under agriculturally unfavorable conditions from advanced education. Meanwhile, the segregation based on gender and adult members’ education has been disappearing.