Gender gaps in educational access, schooling quality and labour market outcomes are pervasive in ... more Gender gaps in educational access, schooling quality and labour market outcomes are pervasive in Pakistan. This brief discusses the findings of three recent studies in Pakistan that highlight the role of education in improving individual productivity, increasing earnings, bringing people out of poverty and providing a pathway to gender equality in the labour market. The papers note the policy implications of the research both for education and labour market policy. In Pakistan, girls have historically been disadvantaged in schooling relative to boys. They lag behind in terms of access to education, the quality of schools available to them, and the labour market outcomes which follow. While there has been some improvement in recent years, the gender gaps in education remain stubbornly high. Given the magnitude of educational disparities, it is not surprising to find stark gender differences also in adult labour market outcomes. Low education levels trigger a vicious cycle wherein poo...
Article usage statistics combine cumulative total PDF downloads and full-text HTML views from pub... more Article usage statistics combine cumulative total PDF downloads and full-text HTML views from publication date (but no earlier than 25 Jun 2011, launch date of this website) to 11 Feb 2013. Article views are only counted from this site. Although these data are updated every 24 hours, there may be a 48-hour delay before the most recent numbers are available.
Pakistan has very large gender gaps in educational outcomes. One explanation could be that girls ... more Pakistan has very large gender gaps in educational outcomes. One explanation could be that girls receive lower educational expenditure allocations than boys within the household, but this has never convincingly been tested. This article investigates whether the intra-household allocation of educational expenditure in Pakistan favours males over females. It also explores two different explanations for the failure of the extant ‘Engel curve’ studies to detect gender-differentiated treatment in education even where gender bias is strongly expected. Using individual level data from the latest household survey from Pakistan, we posit two potential channels of gender bias: bias in the decision whether to enrol/keep sons and daughters in school, and bias in the decision of education expenditure conditional on enrolling both sons and daughters in school. In middle and secondary school ages, evidence points to significant pro-male biases in both the enrolment decision as well as the decision...
In this study we examine whether gender bias in education depends on the extent of female decisio... more In this study we examine whether gender bias in education depends on the extent of female decision-making power. Household headship is used as a measure of female autonomy, with different types of households theorized to reflect varying degrees of female autonomy. Most female-headed-households in Pakistan are formed either because women are widowed or because husbands migrate. Women in male-headed- households are hypothesized to have least autonomy followed by married women heads whose migrant husbands may retain some decision-making power. Widow heads are hypothesized to have the greatest degree of autonomy among women in different households. The econometric findings suggest that married women heads gender-discriminate as much as male heads but that widow-heads have significantly lower bias against girls in enrolment decisions than male heads. The results also suggest that educated female heads gender differentiate less than both uneducated female heads and than male heads. The ev...
This study is driven by some fundamental issues evolving in Pakistan’s educational set-up. In the... more This study is driven by some fundamental issues evolving in Pakistan’s educational set-up. In the past few decades, the country has been experiencing what can only be termed a dramatic revolution in education provision. There has been an explosion of private schooling mostly at the primary but at higher levels as well and, somewhat surprisingly, private schooling cannot be relegated
This paper investigates some of the economic outcomes of education in Pakistan with a view to und... more This paper investigates some of the economic outcomes of education in Pakistan with a view to understanding if education can act as a vehicle for labour market success. Data from a purpose-designed survey of more than 1000 households in Pakistan are utilised. Earnings functions are estimated for agricultural workers, the self-employed and wage earners to estimate the returns to the
... Author info | Abstract | Publisher info | Download info | Related research | Statistics. Auth... more ... Author info | Abstract | Publisher info | Download info | Related research | Statistics. Author Info. Monazza Aslam Abstract. Recent evidence from Pakistan points to significant pro-male bias within households in the allocation of education expenditures. ...
Gender gaps in educational access, schooling quality and labour market outcomes are pervasive in ... more Gender gaps in educational access, schooling quality and labour market outcomes are pervasive in Pakistan. This brief discusses the findings of three recent studies in Pakistan that highlight the role of education in improving individual productivity, increasing earnings, bringing people out of poverty and providing a pathway to gender equality in the labour market. The papers note the policy implications of the research both for education and labour market policy. In Pakistan, girls have historically been disadvantaged in schooling relative to boys. They lag behind in terms of access to education, the quality of schools available to them, and the labour market outcomes which follow. While there has been some improvement in recent years, the gender gaps in education remain stubbornly high. Given the magnitude of educational disparities, it is not surprising to find stark gender differences also in adult labour market outcomes. Low education levels trigger a vicious cycle wherein poo...
Article usage statistics combine cumulative total PDF downloads and full-text HTML views from pub... more Article usage statistics combine cumulative total PDF downloads and full-text HTML views from publication date (but no earlier than 25 Jun 2011, launch date of this website) to 11 Feb 2013. Article views are only counted from this site. Although these data are updated every 24 hours, there may be a 48-hour delay before the most recent numbers are available.
Pakistan has very large gender gaps in educational outcomes. One explanation could be that girls ... more Pakistan has very large gender gaps in educational outcomes. One explanation could be that girls receive lower educational expenditure allocations than boys within the household, but this has never convincingly been tested. This article investigates whether the intra-household allocation of educational expenditure in Pakistan favours males over females. It also explores two different explanations for the failure of the extant ‘Engel curve’ studies to detect gender-differentiated treatment in education even where gender bias is strongly expected. Using individual level data from the latest household survey from Pakistan, we posit two potential channels of gender bias: bias in the decision whether to enrol/keep sons and daughters in school, and bias in the decision of education expenditure conditional on enrolling both sons and daughters in school. In middle and secondary school ages, evidence points to significant pro-male biases in both the enrolment decision as well as the decision...
In this study we examine whether gender bias in education depends on the extent of female decisio... more In this study we examine whether gender bias in education depends on the extent of female decision-making power. Household headship is used as a measure of female autonomy, with different types of households theorized to reflect varying degrees of female autonomy. Most female-headed-households in Pakistan are formed either because women are widowed or because husbands migrate. Women in male-headed- households are hypothesized to have least autonomy followed by married women heads whose migrant husbands may retain some decision-making power. Widow heads are hypothesized to have the greatest degree of autonomy among women in different households. The econometric findings suggest that married women heads gender-discriminate as much as male heads but that widow-heads have significantly lower bias against girls in enrolment decisions than male heads. The results also suggest that educated female heads gender differentiate less than both uneducated female heads and than male heads. The ev...
This study is driven by some fundamental issues evolving in Pakistan’s educational set-up. In the... more This study is driven by some fundamental issues evolving in Pakistan’s educational set-up. In the past few decades, the country has been experiencing what can only be termed a dramatic revolution in education provision. There has been an explosion of private schooling mostly at the primary but at higher levels as well and, somewhat surprisingly, private schooling cannot be relegated
This paper investigates some of the economic outcomes of education in Pakistan with a view to und... more This paper investigates some of the economic outcomes of education in Pakistan with a view to understanding if education can act as a vehicle for labour market success. Data from a purpose-designed survey of more than 1000 households in Pakistan are utilised. Earnings functions are estimated for agricultural workers, the self-employed and wage earners to estimate the returns to the
... Author info | Abstract | Publisher info | Download info | Related research | Statistics. Auth... more ... Author info | Abstract | Publisher info | Download info | Related research | Statistics. Author Info. Monazza Aslam Abstract. Recent evidence from Pakistan points to significant pro-male bias within households in the allocation of education expenditures. ...
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