Assessing the education production function for India with a specific focus on climatic factors

Purpose The study aims to investigate the impact of socioeconomic and climatic factors on the education form of India’s human capital from 1990 to 2023. Design/methodology/approach The study estimated a model that considers education index data as the output in the education production function (EPF) as a function of various socioeconomic and climatic factors. This study utilized the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) cointegration bound testing approach to evaluate long-term connections and short-term fluctuations. Findings The findings suggest that socioeconomic factors like income per capita, governmental educational expenditures and urbanization positively and significantly impact educational outcomes in India’s short and long run. However, unemployment, income inequality and climatic factors such as rainfall demonstrated negative and significant impacts in the long run. Practical implications The study findings conclude that the government should promote policies to reduce unemployment and income inequality. At the same time, policymakers should proactively initiate actions aiming for students to comprehensively understand climate change awareness and be resilient to such changes. Appropriate steps should be taken so that learning continues in the face of climate change, and there should be resilient school infrastructure that can result in improved educational quality or outcomes in India. Originality/value This study makes a novel contribution by introducing the EPF framework to assess the determinants of education with a specific focus on climatic factors.