Gender and Regional disparities in Literacy rate in Karnataka among generation Z people

Abstract

Education plays a major role in the development of human beings and also the development of the State. Among all indicator’s literacy has been considered as one of the very important indicators of educational development in the State. The purpose of the study was to identify whether there was equality or inequality among Generation Z people who reside in urban and rural areas for literacy rate. It further tried to understand whether there were gender differences among Generation Z for literacy rate. Generation was defined as a set of individuals who were born and bought up around the same time-space. Generation Z refers to individuals who were born during the mid-nineties up to 2012.  The rationale behind selecting Generation Z was the availability of advanced technology, urbanization, and digitalized era, and so on, where it can be seen that every individual irrespective of urban and rural had internet access which further removes the barrier of inaccessibility to education when compared to olden days. Literacy refers to one’s ability to read, write and communicate well. The study was descriptive. The data had been collected from both primary and secondary methods.  From the study it can be inferred that there was regional disparity for Generation Z individuals who resided in urban and rural areas, further it can also be inferred that there were certain districts like Dakshina Kannada who had the highest literacy rate and certain districts where the literacy rate was very low such as Yadgiri. From the study, it was also clearly evident that differences existed among males and females in both urban and rural areas among Generation Z.