IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bge/wpaper/805.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Adapting the Supply of Education to the Needs of Girls: Evidence from a Policy Experiment in Rural India

Author

Listed:
  • Marian Meller
  • Stephan Litschig

Abstract

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of a large-scale government initiative (NPEGEL/KGBV) that provided earmarked funds for addressing girls?special needs to public schools in rural India. Our empirical strategy exploits local variation in program eligibility around a threshold based on the female literacy rate at the community level. The main result is that the program led to an enrollment gain of about 6-7 percentage points for girls in upper primary school. Evidence of an enrollment gain for boys is tentative. Available evidence on mechanisms suggests that the program improved girl-friendly school infrastructure and services, as well as gender-neutral school resources.

Suggested Citation

  • Marian Meller & Stephan Litschig, 2015. "Adapting the Supply of Education to the Needs of Girls: Evidence from a Policy Experiment in Rural India," Working Papers 805, Barcelona School of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:bge:wpaper:805
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.barcelonagse.eu/sites/default/files/working_paper_pdfs/805.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paul Schultz, T., 2002. "Why Governments Should Invest More to Educate Girls," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 207-225, February.
    2. Chin, Aimee, 2005. "Can redistributing teachers across schools raise educational attainment? Evidence from Operation Blackboard in India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(2), pages 384-405, December.
    3. Deon Filmer & Norbert Schady, 2008. "Getting Girls into School: Evidence from a Scholarship Program in Cambodia," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 56(3), pages 581-617, April.
    4. Robert Jensen, 2012. "Do Labor Market Opportunities Affect Young Women's Work and Family Decisions? Experimental Evidence from India," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 127(2), pages 753-792.
    5. Harounan Kazianga & Dan Levy & Leigh L. Linden & Matt Sloan, 2013. "The Effects of "Girl-Friendly" Schools: Evidence from the BRIGHT School Construction Program in Burkina Faso," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(3), pages 41-62, July.
    6. David S. Lee & Thomas Lemieux, 2010. "Regression Discontinuity Designs in Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(2), pages 281-355, June.
    7. Imbens, Guido W. & Lemieux, Thomas, 2008. "Regression discontinuity designs: A guide to practice," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 615-635, February.
    8. Joshua Angrist & Eric Bettinger & Erik Bloom & Elizabeth King & Michael Kremer, 2002. "Vouchers for Private Schooling in Colombia: Evidence from a Randomized Natural Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1535-1558, December.
    9. G. Gandhi Kingdon, 2002. "The Gender Gap in Educational Attainment in India: How Much Can Be Explained?," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(2), pages 25-53.
    10. Abhijit V. Banerjee & Rukmini Banerji & Esther Duflo & Rachel Glennerster & Stuti Khemani, 2010. "Pitfalls of Participatory Programs: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in Education in India," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 2(1), pages 1-30, February.
    11. Michael Kremer & Edward Miguel & Rebecca Thornton, 2009. "Incentives to Learn," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 91(3), pages 437-456, August.
    12. McCrary, Justin, 2008. "Manipulation of the running variable in the regression discontinuity design: A density test," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 698-714, February.
    13. Harounan Kazianga & Dan Levy & Leigh L. Linden & Matt Sloan, "undated". "The Effects of "Girl-Friendly" Schools: Evidence from the BRIGHT School Construction Program in Burkina Faso (Journal Article)," Mathematica Policy Research Reports 0115ef3a2998483493dd24537, Mathematica Policy Research.
    14. Michael M. Lokshin & Elena Glinskaya & Marito Garcia, 2004. "The Effect of Early Childhood Development Programmes on Women's Labour Force Participation and Older Children's Schooling in Kenya," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 13(2), pages 240-276, June.
    15. Kim, Jooseop & Alderman, Harold & Orazem, Peter F, 1999. "Can Private School Subsidies Increase Enrollment for the Poor? The Quetta Urban Fellowship Program," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 13(3), pages 443-465, September.
    16. Guido Imbens & Karthik Kalyanaraman, 2012. "Optimal Bandwidth Choice for the Regression Discontinuity Estimator," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 79(3), pages 933-959.
    17. Paul Schultz, T., 2004. "School subsidies for the poor: evaluating the Mexican Progresa poverty program," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(1), pages 199-250, June.
    18. Ambrus, Attila & Field, Erica, 2008. "Early Marriage, Age of Menarche, and Female Schooling Attainment in Bangladesh," Scholarly Articles 3200264, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    19. Ritva Reinikka & Jakob Svensson, 2004. "Local Capture: Evidence from a Central Government Transfer Program in Uganda," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(2), pages 679-705.
    20. Pierre Cahuc & André Zylberberg, 2004. "Labor Economics," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 026203316x, December.
    21. Imbens, Guido W & Angrist, Joshua D, 1994. "Identification and Estimation of Local Average Treatment Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(2), pages 467-475, March.
    22. Rosenzweig, Mark R & Schultz, T Paul, 1982. "Market Opportunities, Genetic Endowments, and Intrafamily Resource Distribution: Child Survival in Rural India," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(4), pages 803-815, September.
    23. Erik Meyersson, 2014. "Islamic Rule and the Empowerment of the Poor and Pious," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 82(1), pages 229-269, January.
    24. Erica Field & Attila Ambrus, 2008. "Early Marriage, Age of Menarche, and Female Schooling Attainment in Bangladesh," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 116(5), pages 881-930, October.
    25. repec:mpr:mprres:7836 is not listed on IDEAS
    26. Behrman, Jere R, 1988. "Intrahousehold Allocation of Nutrients in Rural India: Are Boys Favored? Do Parents Exhibit Inequality Aversion?," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 40(1), pages 32-54, March.
    27. Davies, James B & Zhang, Junsen, 1995. "Gender Bias, Investments in Children, and Bequests," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 36(3), pages 795-818, August.
    28. Kim, Jooseop & Alderman, Harold & Orazem, Peter, 1999. "Can Private School Subsidies Increase Schooling for the Poor? The Quetta Urban Fellowship Program," Staff General Research Papers Archive 1709, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    29. Dana Burde & Leigh L. Linden, 2013. "Bringing Education to Afghan Girls: A Randomized Controlled Trial of Village-Based Schools," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(3), pages 27-40, July.
    30. Glick, Peter, 2008. "What Policies will Reduce Gender Schooling Gaps in Developing Countries: Evidence and Interpretation," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 36(9), pages 1623-1646, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Chatterjee Somdeep, 2017. "Getting Girls to Schools! – Assessing the Impacts of a Targeted Program on Enrollment and Academic Performance," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 17(1), pages 1-6, February.
    2. Harounan Kazianga & Francis Makamu, 2017. "Crop Choice, School Participation, and Child Labor in Developing Countries: Cotton Expansion in Burkina Faso," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 99(1), pages 34-54.
    3. Ahmed Elsayed & Olivier Marie, 2020. "Less School (Costs), More (Female) Education? Lessons from Egypt Reducing Years of Compulsory Schooling," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 20-037/V, Tinbergen Institute.
    4. Stephanie Psaki & Nicole Haberland & Barbara Mensch & Lauren Woyczynski & Erica Chuang, 2022. "Policies and interventions to remove gender‐related barriers to girls' school participation and learning in low‐ and middle‐income countries: A systematic review of the evidence," Campbell Systematic Reviews, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 18(1), March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Glick, Peter, 2008. "What Policies will Reduce Gender Schooling Gaps in Developing Countries: Evidence and Interpretation," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 36(9), pages 1623-1646, September.
    2. Glewwe, Paul & Kremer, Michael, 2006. "Schools, Teachers, and Education Outcomes in Developing Countries," Handbook of the Economics of Education, in: Erik Hanushek & F. Welch (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Education, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 16, pages 945-1017, Elsevier.
    3. Karthik Muralidharan & Nishith Prakash, 2017. "Cycling to School: Increasing Secondary School Enrollment for Girls in India," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(3), pages 321-350, July.
    4. Gurgand, Marc & Lorenceau, Adrien & Mélonio, Thomas, 2023. "Student loans: Credit constraints and higher education in South Africa," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).
    5. Deon Filmer & Norbert Schady, 2014. "The Medium-Term Effects of Scholarships in a Low-Income Country," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 49(3), pages 663-694.
    6. Owen Ozier, 2018. "The Impact of Secondary Schooling in Kenya: A Regression Discontinuity Analysis," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 53(1), pages 157-188.
    7. David K. Evans & Arkadipta Ghosh, 2008. "Prioritizing Educational Investments in Children in the Developing World," Working Papers WR-587, RAND Corporation.
    8. Sun, Ang & Zhao, Yaohui, 2014. "Divorce, Abortion and Children's Sex Ratio: The Impact of Divorce Reform in China," IZA Discussion Papers 8230, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    9. Erten, Bilge & Keskin, Pinar, 2019. "Compulsory schooling for whom? The role of gender, poverty, and religiosity," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 187-203.
    10. Maitra, Pushkar & Pal, Sarmistha & Sharma, Anurag, 2016. "Absence of Altruism? Female Disadvantage in Private School Enrollment in India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 105-125.
    11. Moussa P Blimpo & Ousman Gajigo & Todd Pugatch, 2019. "Financial Constraints and Girls’ Secondary Education: Evidence from School Fee Elimination in The Gambia," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 33(1), pages 185-208.
    12. Barrera-Osorio, Felipe & Raju, Dhushyanth, 2011. "Evaluating public per-student subsidies to low-cost private schools : regression-discontinuity evidence from Pakistan," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5638, The World Bank.
    13. Mazzutti, Caio Cícero Toledo Piza da Costa, 2016. "Three essays on the causal impacts of child labour laws in Brazil," Economics PhD Theses 0616, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    14. Yeasmin Sayeed, 2016. "Effect of girls' secondary school stipend on completed schooling, age at marriage, and age at first birth," WIDER Working Paper Series 110, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    15. Alejandro J. Ganimian & Richard J. Murnane, 2014. "Improving Educational Outcomes in Developing Countries: Lessons from Rigorous Impact Evaluations," NBER Working Papers 20284, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Giordono, Leanne & Pugatch, Todd, 2015. "Informal Fee Elimination and Student Performance: Evidence from The Gambia," IZA Discussion Papers 9560, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    17. Yeasmin Sayeed, 2016. "Effect of girls' secondary school stipend on completed schooling, age at marriage, and age at first birth: Evidence from Bangladesh," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2016-110, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    18. Yoichi Arai & Yu‐Chin Hsu & Toru Kitagawa & Ismael Mourifié & Yuanyuan Wan, 2022. "Testing identifying assumptions in fuzzy regression discontinuity designs," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 13(1), pages 1-28, January.
    19. Martin Huber, 2019. "An introduction to flexible methods for policy evaluation," Papers 1910.00641, arXiv.org.
    20. Chen, Yi & Zhao, Yi, 2022. "The timing of first marriage and subsequent life outcomes: Evidence from a natural experiment," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 713-731.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    girls' education; school enrollment; Gender Gap; school resources; regression discontinuity; impact evaluation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H75 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Government: Health, Education, and Welfare
    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • I28 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Government Policy
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
    • O22 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Development Planning and Policy - - - Project Analysis

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bge:wpaper:805. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Bruno Guallar (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bargses.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.