School Construction and Intergenerational Human Capital

Abstract

This paper estimates the direct and intergenerational effects of one of the world’s largest school expansion policies. Starting in 1993-94, the District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) constructed over 100,000 new schools and served over 50 million children in India. Using a fuzzy regression discontinuity design I show that the policy increased enrollment, literacy and years of education for both male and female direct beneficiaries. Further, I find that children whose mothers were DPEP beneficiaries had higher scores on vernacular (18 percent), math (13 percent), and English (15 percent) tests, while Father’s DPEP exposure had no effect on children’s learning.