Although shadow education in India has been in practice for a long time, the scale has grown dramatically in recent years, with the size of the industry ranging between $40 and $70 billion. Drawing from the five rounds of National Sample Survey data sets on education, the study examines the trends and socioeconomic determinants of shadow education participation in India. It also addresses the time burden of shadow education and students’ learning outcomes by using the Indian Human Development Survey database. The findings state that households’ socioeconomic status, educational level of households’ head, urban residence, current schooling levels and type of educational institutions by management are highly significant determinants of participation in shadow education. The analysis further indicates that shadow education is positively associated with learning outcomes at the elementary level and that its contribution is larger in mathematics. However, shadow education costs a couple of hours per day of recreational time of the children (time cost), 40–50% share of household’s total educational expenditure, and around 20% share of household’s per capita annual consumption expenditure (economic cost).

影子教育在印度的实践虽然由来已久，但近年来规模增长迅猛，产业规模在40-700亿美元之间。该研究利用有关教育的五轮全国抽样调查数据集，研究了印度影子教育参与的趋势和社会经济决定因素。它还通过使用印度人类发展调查数据库解决影子教育的时间负担和学生的学习成果。研究结果表明，家庭的社会经济地位、户主的教育水平、城市居住地、当前的学校教育水平和管理的教育机构类型是参与影子教育的重要决定因素。分析进一步表明，影子教育与小学阶段的学习成果呈正相关，其在数学方面的贡献更大。然而，影子教育花费了孩子们每天几个小时的娱乐时间（时间成本），占家庭总教育支出的40-50%，占家庭人均年消费支出（经济成本）的20%左右。