Floods, Community Infrastructure, and Children's Heterogeneous Learning Losses in Rural India

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Interdisciplinary Centers, Units and Projects::Penn Population Studies Centers::Population Center Working Papers (PSC/PARC)
Degree type
Discipline
Education
International and Area Studies
K-12 Education
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Urban, Community and Regional Planning
Environmental Studies
Subject
Education
learning disparities
climate disasters
floods
infrastructure effects
caste inequalities
Hindu Muslim inequalities
social stratification
Funder
The authors gratefully acknowledge useful comments from participants in the Asian Development Bank Institute conference on Building Resilient Education Systems in Asia and the Pacific– Lessons from Past Disruptions and support from Penn’s University Research Foundation, India Research and Engagement Fund, and Presidential Fellowship Program, as well as from NSF PIRE Grant 2230615.
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2025-02-03
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Khalid, Nazar
Thapa, Amrit
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Abstract

India has the world’s largest number of school-aged children. The majority live in rural areas, many of which are highly flood-prone. Previous studies document that in such areas, floods are associated with lower enrollments, attendance, and learning, in some cases with differentiation by gender, caste/religion, and family SES. Previous literature suggests that components of community infrastructure have positive associations with children’s learning. However, previous literature has not addressed whether better community physical and social infrastructures are associated with (1) smaller flood-related learning losses on average, (2) different learning for marginalized versus other children in the absence of floods, and (3) different vulnerabilities to floods for marginalized versus other children. This paper finds that (1) most aspects of community physical and social infrastructure are not associated with lower flood-related learning losses on average, but proximity to towns and several components of social infrastructure are associated with lower flood-related learning losses on average, (2) community physical and social infrastructure components have heterogeneous associations, in some cases increasing, in most cases not affecting, and in other cases reducing disparities in learning between marginalized and other children in the absence of floods, and (3) community physical and social infrastructure components have heterogeneous effects, in some cases increasing, in most cases not affecting, and in other cases reducing disparities in learning between marginalized and other children in the presence of floods.

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Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC), 2025-117
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2025-02-03
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Khalid, Nazar, Jere R. Behrman, Emily Hannum and Amrit Thapa. 2025. “Floods, Community Infrastructure, and Children’s Heterogeneous Learning Losses in Rural India.” University of Pennsylvania. Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC), 2025-117.
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