Returns to Education in India

•This paper examines returns to education in India for consumption and wages.•The returns appear high at the individual level for both men and women.•Yet comparing across cohorts the returns are low for men and zero for women.•The results are robust to measurement error and school quality.•There are higher returns in the regular wage market but that employs few people. In India both men and women with more education live in households with greater consumption per capita. Yet aggregating across age cohorts and states, an extra year of education brings male cohorts only 4% more consumption and provides no additional consumption for female cohorts. This result is robust to: (1) accounting for survey measurement error, (2) different measures of household consumption and composition, (3) allowing returns to differ by state and school quality, and (4) age misreporting. The only area with substantial returns is entering into regular wage work which still employs only a small fraction of the population.