published in: World Development, 2004, 32 (7), 1075-1107
At the Millennium Summit, the world community pledged to promote gender equality and
chose as a specific target the achievement of gender equity in primary and secondary
education by the year 2005 in every country of the world. Based on the findings from a
growing empirical literature that suggests that gender equity in education promotes economic
growth and reduce fertility, child mortality, and undernutrition, we estimate what the costs in
terms of growth, and forgone fertility, mortality and undernutrition reduction, will be for the 45
countries that are, on current projections, unlikely to meet the target. Our estimates suggest
that, by 2005, the countries that are off track are likely to suffer 0.1-0.3 percentage points
lower per capita growth rates as a result and will have 0.1-0.4 more children per woman, and,
by 2015, an average of 15 per 1000 higher rates of under five mortality and 2.5 percentage
points higher prevalence of underweight children under five. Sensitivity analyses suggest that
the results are quite robust to using different specifications and approaches to estimating
these losses.
We use cookies to provide you with an optimal website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site as well as cookies that are only used for anonymous statistical purposes, for comfort settings or to display personalized content. You can decide for yourself which categories you want to allow. Please note that based on your settings, you may not be able to use all of the site's functions.
Cookie settings
These necessary cookies are required to activate the core functionality of the website. An opt-out from these technologies is not available.
In order to further improve our offer and our website, we collect anonymous data for statistics and analyses. With the help of these cookies we can, for example, determine the number of visitors and the effect of certain pages on our website and optimize our content.