Household’s Characteristics and Learning Poverty: An Empirical Study

‘Learning poverty’ among school students is a cause of concern. Studies of family effects on students’ learning outcomes in the context of North-eastern region of India and Meghalaya are significantly lacking. The present study is about ‘learning poverty’ and its relationship with household characteristics such as household-income, parents’ educational level, parents’ occupation, nature of residence and number of siblings in the context of the Khasi–Jantia tribes of Meghalaya, which follows a matrilineal system. From the field experiment conducted on 407 students of classes 9 and 10 from 15 randomly selected schools from Shillong and Jowai towns, the findings indicate that ‘learning poverty’ is significantly higher in proportion for students belonging to the lower household-income groups. Besides low household-income, low level of parents’ education, not having and staying in one’s own house, higher number of siblings and parents’ occupation in low-end wage employment have emerged as critical factors responsible for the presence of ‘learning poverty’. The study recommends that policymakers and school management consider family effects seriously and work with parents from poor households to improve learning outcomes, mitigating the menace of ‘learning poverty’ on the society. However, the results of the study need to be examined with one caveat that it has not taken into consideration the school effects, which could too impact learning outcomes. JEL Codes: I240, I250, I210