Measuring the economic gain ofinvesting in girls : the girl effect dividend

Chaaban, Jad ; Cunningham, Wendy

关键词: ABORTION;    ACCESS TO HEALTH;    ACCESS TO HEALTH SERVICES;    ADOLESCENCE;    ADOLESCENT;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-5753
RP-ID  :  WPS5753

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Although girls are approximately halfthe youth population in developing countries, theycontribute less than their potential to the economy. Theobjective of this paper is to quantify the opportunity costof girls' exclusion from productive employment with thehope that stark figures will lead policymakers to reconsiderthe current underinvestment in girls. The paper explores thelinkages between investing in girls and potential increasesin national income by examining three widely prevalentaspects of adolescent girls' lives: early schooldropout, teenage pregnancy and joblessness. The countriesincluded in the analysis are: Bangladesh, Brazil, Burundi,China, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Paraguay,Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda. The authors usesecondary data to allow for some comparability acrosscountries. They find that investing in girls so that theywould complete the next level of education would lead tolifetime earnings of today's cohort of girls that isequivalent to up to 68 percent of annual gross domesticproduct. When adjusting for ability bias and labor demandelasticities, this figure falls to 54 percent, or 1.5percent per year. Closing the inactivity rate between girlsand boys would increase gross domestic product by up to 5.4percent, but when accounting for students, male-female wagegaps and labor demand elasticities, the joblessness gapbetween girls and their male counterparts yields an increasein gross domestic product of up to 1.2 percent in a singleyear. The cost of adolescent pregnancy as a share of grossdomestic could be as high as 30 percent or as low as 1percent over a girl's lifetime, depending on theassumptions used to calculate the losses.