Reference using Indian district data:
Barnes, Douglas, Frederick C. Fliegel, and Reeve Vanneman.
1982. "Rural literacy and agricultural development: cause or effect?"
Rural Sociology 47(Spring): 251-271.
Abstract: The causal relationship between agricultural development and literacy
has been a controversial and sometimes clouded issue. Early research found that
literacy is positively related to farmer innovation and speculated that literacy
is a fundamental prerequisite for development. More recent studies have found
that the relationship between literacy and innovation becomes insignificant when
controlling for other factors. To clarify the causal relationship between
literacy and development, 1961 and 1971 agricultural and census data are analyzed for
almost all of India's 334 districts. The over-time dimension permits the
research to examine the impact of literacy on change in agricultural production
and vice versa. According to the findings, Indian districts with high levels of
1961 agricultural production experienced growth in Ru literacy during the 1960s.
However, high 1961 Ru literacy did not cause higher levels of agricultural
production between 1961 and 1971. This result may stem from the fact that
accelerated food production took place in the low literacy, wheat growing areas
of India during the 1960s, coupled with the fact that increased agricultural
production attracted in-migration of (often nonliterate) agricultural laborers.
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23, 2001 |
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