Getting a Child through Secondary School and to College in India: The Role of Household Social Capital

In the classic formulations of social capital theory, families employ their social capital resources to enhance other capitals, in particular their human capital investments. Social capital would seem to be especially important in the case of India, where, in recent years, higher education has been under considerable stress with rising educational demand, inadequate supply, and little parental experience to guide children's transition through the education system. We use the 2005 and 2012 waves of the nationally representative India Human Development Survey (IHDS) to show how relatively high-status connections advantage some families' chances of their children reaching educational milestones such as secondary school completion and college entry. The 2005 IHDS survey measure of a household's formal sector contacts in education, government, and health predicts their children's educational achievements by the second wave, seven years later, controlling for households' and children's initial backgrounds.