Effects of Male and Female Education on Economic Growth: Some Evidence from Asia Using the Extreme Bounds Analysis

This paper uses the Extreme Bounds Analysis (EBA) to examine the comparative growth effects of gender disaggregated and level-specific enrolment ratios in a panel of Asian economies. To test our hypotheses, at first we employ an endogenous growth type framework where education has externality effects and then we compare the results with those obtained from an alternative neoclassical exogenous growth type model where education’s effect is transmitted only via total factor productivity (TFP). It is found that the externality effects of education are positive and robust for both male and female and that these are relatively large and significant at the primary, secondary as well as tertiary level. Furthermore, in the endogenous type framework, a gender gap is observed wherein the male growth effect of education is consistently larger than that of female at all levels. Compared to these, in the neoclassical type model we find that only the male and female primary and secondary enrolment ratios have robust growth effects. In contrast to the externality effects, these growth effects are small.