Social Benefits of Education

Education may be seen as a means of empowerment; control over one's life in more than just in economic sense. Education is not merely a means for better income and employment, opportunities for individuals or for higher economic growth potential for their nations. The social benefits of education spread in many directions. Education leads to better health care, smaller family norms, greater community and political participation, less economic inequality and a greater reduction of absolute poverty-social benefits that a narrow economic approach to education fails to capture.

Education leads to many social benefits - improvement in standards of hygiene, reduction in infant and child mortality rates, decline in population growth rates, increase in labor production, greater political empowerment and democratization, and an improved sense of national unity and integrity. It has been accepted that the rate of return on education, primarily primary education, even more on the girl child, is very high. Still India has been struggling to universalize elementary education over half a century and yet has not been able to declare it as a fundamental right or make it compulsory.

Not only in the urban areas but in the rural areas too people are well aware of the potential benefits from education. These are perceived as being of different kinds. The most widespread is the demand for functional literacy, especially among women, the ability to read numbers, communicate with officials, write letters, use ration cards, read documents/papers before putting their thumb impression or signing them etc, all the diverse ways in which literacy and numeracy are almost essential in a monetized and increasingly urbanized economy. Literacy or education is also seen as a safety net, once again specially for women it may not be seen as an essential attribute to play the role of mother, wife and partner in work, but in case of misfortune, some level of literacy will afford better chances of earning an independent income.