The Registrar General & Census Commissioner recently released the Census 2011 data on Households with at least one member with Educational level matriculation and above by Household Size. The data presents some interesting insights.
Households with at least one Graduate or above
According to the 2011 census, 4.14 crore households have at least one graduate or above out of the total 24.8 crore households. This is about 16.7% of the total households or one out of every 6 households.
The corresponding percentage in the 2001 census was 12.2%. There is almost a 4.5% point increase in the number of households with at least one graduate or above.
Top 10 States/UTs – % of Households with at least one Graduate or above
In States/UTs, Delhi tops the chart with 40.3% households with at least one graduate or above followed by the UTs Chandigarh (39.9%) & Puducherry (29.7%). The other entries in the top 10 are Goa, Uttarakhand, Manipur, Kerala, Haryana, Maharashtra and Himachal Pradesh.
Bottom 10 States/UTs – % of Households with at least one Graduate or above
At the bottom is Meghalaya with just 10% households with at least one graduate or above, followed by Assam & Bihar with a similar percentage.The other states in the bottom ten are Tripura, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Arunachal Pradesh & West Bengal. It is worth noting that none of the states from the West & South of India are part of the bottom 10. Overall, 17 States/UTs are above the national average while 18 are below the national average.
Households with Male & Female Graduates
According to census data, a total of 3.3 crore households have one male graduate or above, while the corresponding number for one female graduate or above is 2.2 crore. This puts the percentage of households with male graduate at 13.4% while the corresponding percentage for female graduates is 8.8%.
As with graduates, Delhi (33.2%) tops the chart in percentage of households with male graduates while Chandigarh (28.9%) tops the chart in percentage of households with female graduates. Goa, Kerala & Punjab are the only states where the percentage of households with a female graduate is more than the percentage of households with a male graduate. The difference is as high as 3.4 percentage points in Kerala.
15 States/UTs are above the national average percentage of households with a male graduate while the remaining 20 are below the national average. 17 States/UTs are above the national average percentage of households with a female graduate while the remaining 18 are below the national average.
Households with One Matriculate or above
As per the census data, about 12.3 crore households have at least one matriculate or above out of the 24.8 crore households. This is 49.5% of the total households. In other words, almost 1 out of every 2 households in the country has at least one matriculate or above. The corresponding percentage in 2001 was 39.4. There is more than a 10 percentage point jump in the 10 years.
The number of households with at least one male matriculate and above is 10.5 crore (42.2%) while 7.5 crore (30.3%) households have at least one female matriculate and above in the country.
What about the States?
Kerala (75.5%) tops the chart with every 3 out of 4 households having one matriculate or above. 20 States/UTs fall above the national average of 49.5% while only 15 fall below. In households with male matriculate, Chandigarh tops the list with 68.6% households while Kerala tops the list in households with a female matriculate with 60.8%.
Kerala is the only state with more households of female matriculates than male matriculates. There is almost a 6 percentage point difference between the male matriculate households and the female matriculate households in Kerala. Meghalaya has the lowest percentage of households with a matriculate (33.4%). Meghalaya (24.6%) is also at the bottom in households with male matriculates with while Bihar (17.4%) occupies the last place in households with female matriculates.
(Rakesh has been working on issues related to Right to Information (RTI) for a decade. He is a Data/Information enthusiast & passionate about Governance/Policy issues)
