Government Spending on Education and Closing the Gender Gap: The Case of Developing Economies

Within the context of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the gender equality in education is considered one of the most challenging goals for most developing economies. Using Panel Least Square with Regional Dummies (LSDV) for a sample of Developing countries over the period 1990 to 2014, the study estimates the factors responsible for possibly narrowing down the gender gap in education for the primary, secondary, and tertiary levels. More specifically, and among many other factors, the study focuses on the response of gender gap in education to economic growth, information communication technology (ICT), openness, and public spending on education, female population, and regional dummies to estimate their impact on closing the gender gap in education and provides predictions on the ability of these countries to close the gap by 2030 if they depend solely on government spending on education and no other factor. The results show that with about 14 years to go for the SDGs to be concluded, bridging the educational gap is still a challenging goal for many developing countries. For the off-track countries, increasing government spending only will not be enough to close the gender gap in education and has to be accompanied with other policies such as increasing economic growth and expanding the use of telephones, cell phones, and internet, in order to accelerate the closure the gender gap in education.