The Population Council and the Rockefeller Foundation have compiled the attached information sheet on girls' education to give a global overview and a more in-depth understanding of not only why girls' education is an important priority, but also the challenges faced in implementing a plan to attract more girls to school and keep them there longer.

The universal right to primary education has been affirmed by the world's governments for more than 50 years. However, more than 130 million children who should be attending primary school are not. Two-thirds of these children are girls. Without education, it is difficult for women to exercise their other rights and meet their aspirations: adequate livelihoods, negotiating power in marriage, participation in political decisionmaking, and a fair chance in the modern economy for their children. Education is an investment that stays with a woman throughout her life, is hers to use as she wishes, and cannot be taken away.

In addition to helping girls and women fulfill their aspirations as individuals, educating girls also has well documented benefits for the broader society. These include increased economic productivity, improvements in health, delayed age at marriage, lower fertility, increased political participation, and generally more effective investments in the next generation. While there are many other possible interventions to achieve these social goods, girls' education is the only one which impacts all of them simultaneously.

Government investment in schooling for girls, especially at the primary school level, is particularly justified in that it brings so many benefits for the broader society. Most governments already have policies affirming primary education, and some apparatus for delivering education exists in virtually all countries. Even in settings with low enrollment for both boys and girls, the argument for governments to focus resources on girls is compelling given the positive effect of girls' education on development. With relatively modest modifications in the content and quality of schooling, teachers and materials, a far higher percentage of girls could enroll in and complete primary school, or remain there long enough to acquire basic literacy and numeracy skills.

Governments exhibit a wide range of commitment to financing education. In Pakistan, for example, only 2.6 percent of the national budget was invested in education in 1987, while nearby Bangladesh spent 10.6 percent of its national budget on education.⁵ Some countries, including Costa Rica and Bolivia, have invested as much as 20 percent of their budgets in education.¹⁰

Benefits of Girls' Education

Educating girls is associated with numerous social benefits across a variety of sectors

Increased economic productivity

Women with some education are more likely to work in the wage economy² and more likely to earn higher wages.

• Women's wages rise by 10 to 20 percent for each year of schooling.³

Education enhances women's productivity in both farm and non-farm sectors.

• Four years of school boosts farmers' annual productivity by an average of 9 percent.^1,4
• In the urban informal sector, there is a positive association between education and earnings.⁴

Evidence from some Asian countries links investment in primary education directly to rapid economic growth and resultant poverty alleviation.

Increased political participation

Educated women are better informed about their rights, more likely to exercise them, and more likely to participate in the formal political system.¹

Improved health

At the national level, women's education is associated with longer life expectancy, lower infant and maternal mortality, and lower fertility. At the family level, women's education has a major impact on health by increasing access to and use of information, improving use of health services, and increasing the proportion of family income earned by and allocated by women.

Women's education can also mitigate the negative health effects of low income. This has been demonstrated in China, Costa Rica, Sri Lanka, and Kerala, India, where female education is a clear priority of government and health achievements are high, despite family income remaining quite low.¹ Even modest levels of maternal education result in higher child survival independent of family income.

• This is especially striking in the poorest countries where each year of maternal education is associated with a 5 to 10 percent decline in child mortality.¹
• Even one to three years of maternal schooling decreases child mortality by approximately 15 percent; the same level of paternal education results in a 6 percent decrease.¹
• A study conducted in 13 African countries shows that a 10 percent increase in female literacy leads to a 10 percent decline in child mortality. Male literacy has little influence.¹
• In Peru, seven or more years of maternal education reduces mortality risks by 75 percent.²

Delayed marriage

Educated women tend to marry later, with implications for their economic opportunities and choices, and for fertility.

• In Africa, women with seven or more years of schooling marry five years later than women with no education. While the effect on age at first birth is not uniform across Africa, it has increasing importance in some countries, including Kenya and Ghana.¹

Lower fertility

Educated women have lower desired and actual family size. They are also much more likely to use contraception and have longer intervals between births. Among married couples, the wife's education has a much stronger effect on fertility than husband's.¹

• In Asia, Africa, and Latin America, women with seven or more years of schooling have two to three children less than women with up to three years of schooling.⁴
• In Latin America and Asia, well-educated women are increasingly having the number of children they want.¹
• In Peru and Brazil, women with no education have approximately six children while women with a secondary education have about three children.²

More effective investments in the next generation

Children of educated mothers, especially daughters, are more likely to receive education.¹

• Mothers' education has a greater effect on children's education than fathers', even though fathers' education implies a greater effect on income.
• In Pakistan, mothers' education is the single strongest determinant of schooling for their children, especially for girls.⁵
• In Peru, mothers' education increases girls' school enrollment as much as 40 percent more than fathers' education.²

Education improves women's opportunities to participate in the wage economy. Increasing women's access to income can be especially beneficial to children's health.

• In Guatemala, it takes 15 times as much spending to achieve improvement in child nutrition when income is earned by the father rather than the mother.¹

While there are many other possible interventions to achieve these social goods, girls' education is the only one which impacts all of them simultaneously.

Girls Get Less Schooling Than Boys

Globally, two-thirds of the children who are not enrolled in primary school are girls.⁴ In the world's 40 poorest countries, the gap in primary school enrollment between girls and boys averages 20 percent.⁶ In almost all developing countries, gender gaps exist in enrollment and completion.

Enrollment

For all developing countries, approximately 10 percent of boys and 40 percent of girls ages six to 11 never enroll in school.⁶

• This is especially pronounced in rural areas where other factors such as employment prospects and mothers' education are lower, and where girls are more likely to have other responsibilities like housework and child care.
• In South Asia, the gap in school enrollment for boys and girls has widened because policies to increase enrollment benefit boys more than girls.⁶
• In Peru, the proportion of school-age children enrolled in secondary school is 9 percent higher for boys than for girls. In rural areas, this figure climbs to 17 percent.²

Completion

On average, 9.6 percent of girls in low income countries leave primary school before finishing, compared to 8.2 percent of boys.⁶

• In Africa, 8.6 percent of girls who start school drop out before completing primary school.⁶
• In India, no more than one-third of girls complete a primary education.⁴
• In Pakistan, only 17 percent of girls in rural areas complete primary school.⁵

Getting Girls to School

There are many reasons why girls are kept out of school, resulting from a combination of community and national priorities and family factors. A number of recent studies have demonstrated policy alternatives to address some of these issues.

Reducing direct costs

Many families, especially those who are poor, cannot afford the costs of school fees, transportation, materials, or clothing for their children to attend school. In most cases where resources are scarce, poor parents prioritize educating their sons over their daughters.

• Fee waivers, subsidies, scholarships, and free books and uniforms can be made available for girls to decrease the direct costs to their parents.^2,6

Reducing opportunity costs

Young girls tend to have numerous other responsibilities in the family and household, such as caring for younger siblings, housework, farming, or trade which prevent them from attending school.

• Flexible school times can help girls meet their other family responsibilities without missing or dropping out of school.
• Programs for pre-school or sibling child care during school hours enable girls to attend school and to focus on learning rather than caring for their brothers and sisters.
• In Bangladesh, these measures have been shown to increase girls' enrollment and retention in school without increasing cost.⁷

Addressing safety and modesty concerns

Community and cultural standards of modesty may preclude girls from attending school, especially if they must travel outside their communities, after they reach puberty, and where other students or teachers are male.

• In Pakistan, when school is available in a girl's village, girls are as likely to attend school as boys. When a school is nearby, but not in the village, girls are 10 percent less likely to go to school than boys.⁵

• Several programs have demonstrated that modifications in the delivery system can significantly increase girls' enrollment and retention. These steps include locating schools or satellite schools close to girls' homes, initiating single sex schools or classrooms, and using female teachers, especially those who come from the community.^2,7 These need not entail significant extra cost.⁷

Changing family perceptions of investment

Decisions about sending children to school are made by parents, often based on their perceptions of the likely return on their investment. Parents sometimes perceive that the economic return for educating daughters is lower than for educating sons. In fact, there is little evidence to show that wage rates are lower for females than males in the labor force,⁸ although in most settings female labor force participation is lower because of bias.

A related problem is parents' perception of the quality and relevance of education. There is growing evidence that as curriculum builds more on "hard skills" like math and science, parents are more willing to send their daughters to school. In fact, in some settings, improving educational quality seems to increase girls' school enrollment more than boys'². Some relatively simple steps can be taken to begin to address these concerns:

• Help girls gain access to science and math education;
• Depict girls and women as income earners in textbooks and broader media; and
• Promote adult education and income earning opportunities for parents, especially mothers, to increase their willingness to educate their daughters.

What Governments Can Do to Improve Girls' Access to and Achievement in School

Existing educational systems, with high recurring costs and relatively low returns to investment, are far from cost effective. There are significant recurrent costs associated with present underutilization and drop out. Given the existing investments and the enormous social benefits associated with girls' education, the question is not how much it will cost to better educate girls, but how much it will cost not to.

Cost savings and efficiency

Policies should aim to retain all the girls who start in school--there is space for them. Drop outs imply a heavy cost to the educational system, to girls, and to society. Policies focusing on keeping girls in school might include incentive programs or consciousness-raising campaigns.

Reallocating resources within the education sector

The benefits of education for boys and girls are highest at the primary level. Yet many countries invest too much of their education budgets in higher level education. Shifting some of these resources from higher education to basic education could significantly improve the reach and quality of primary education.

Significant improvements in the number and quality of school places could be also be made by allocating existing resources more efficiently. Reforms might include: double shifting of classrooms, redeploying administrators to teaching, using teacher aides, and using satellite schools to reach remote areas. Efforts in several countries have demonstrated cost saving and improvements based on these kinds of reforms.⁴

Selective expansion

In some settings, increasing the number of places in schools simply by expanding the existing school system would significantly increase girls' enrollment.²

• Of 36 million girls out of school in Africa, half could be brought into the system merely by expanding the existing school system. Bringing the remaining half into school will require special attention to redesigning the system and redeploying resources.

Resources

Recent studies have provided a range of estimates of the resources that will be required to improve girls enrollment and achievement in school. While these estimates vary widely, it is clear that a shift in the spending priorities of governments and international donors will be necessary to achieve expansion and improvements in schooling for girls. One estimate holds that equalizing male and female school enrollment would have required more than $6.5 billion additional expenditures in primary and secondary education in 1990. Taking population growth into account, the cost of closing the gender gap would cost $18 billion by the year 2005.⁹

Sources

1. World Bank, World Development Report, 1993.
2. Barbara Herz and Shahidu P. Khandker, eds. Women's Work, Education and Family Welfare in Peru, World Bank, Discussion Papers #161, 1991.
3. Lawrence Summers, "The Most Influential Investment" Scientific American, August, 1992, page 132.
4. Christopher Colclough with Keith M. Lewin, Educating All the Children, Oxford University Press, 1993.
5. Zeba A. Sathar and Cynthia B. Lloyd, "Who Gets Primary Schooling in Pakistan: Inequalities Among and Within Families", Population Council Working Papers No. 52, 1993.
6. Elizabeth M. King and M. Anne Hill, eds. Women's Education in Developing Countries: Barriers, Benefits, and Policies, World Bank, 1992.
7. Manzoor Ahmed, Colette Chabbott, Arun Joshi, Rohindi Pande and Cynthia J. Prather, Primary Education for All, Learning from the BRAC Experience: A Case Study, Project ABEL: Advancing Basic Education and Literacy, 1993.
8. T. Paul Schulz, "Investments in the Schooling and Health of Women and Men", Journal of Human Resources, Fall 1993.
9. Population Action International, "Closing the Gender Gap: Educating Girls", 1993 Report on Progress Towards World Population Stabilization.
10. UNESCO, World Education Report, 1993.

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