Taking action: achieving gender equality and empowering women

38 Chapter 3
Higher levels
of education
increase
the gains
from formal
labor force
participation
more for women
than for men
in important family decisions, to work in nonfarm occupations, and to control
economic resources. 3 Education alone may not be transformative in the absence
of other normative shifts and changed power relations. In such settings, it takes
more than education to reach thresholds of change.
Labor market benefits to educated women
Studies in Latin America, Asia, and Africa show that higher levels of education
increase the probability that women will engage in formal paid employment
(Birdsall and Behrman 1991; Cameron, Dowling, and Worsick 2001). Higher
levels of education increase the gains from formal labor force participation
more for women than for men (Deolalikar 1994; Aromolaran 2002; Birdsall
and Fox 1985). A review of the literature on returns to investment in education
finds that, overall, women receive only slightly higher returns to their schooling
investments (10 percent) than men (9 percent; Psacharopoulos and Patrinos
2002). Returns vary, however, by level of schooling. Women experience higher
returns to secondary education (18 percent) than do men (14 percent), but
lower returns (13 percent) to primary education than do men (20 percent).
The impact of education on fertility and mortality
Female secondary education is a critical influence on fertility and mortality.
Subbarao and Rainey (1995) conducted a cross-country study of fertility and
secondary school attainment among women in 65 low- and middle-income
countries in 1985 that covered 93 percent of the population of the developing
world. In countries where few women had a secondary education, families averaged
more than five children, of whom one or two died in infancy. In countries
where half the girls were educated at the secondary level, the fertility rate fell
to just over three children and child deaths were rare. Subbarao and Rainey
calculate that in these 65 countries, doubling the proportion of girls educated
at the secondary level from 19 percent to 38 percent, holding constant all other
variables (including access to family planning and healthcare) would have cut
the fertility rate from 5.3 children per woman to 3.9 and the infant mortality
rate from 81 deaths per 1,000 births to 38.
Another study summarizing sample surveys across the developing world
found that the higher the level of female education, the lower is desired family
size and the greater the success in achieving it (Schultz 1993). Further, each
additional year of a mother’s schooling cuts the expected infant mortality rate
by 5–10 percent (table 3.1).
The impact of education on women’s health and bodily integrity
Higher levels of education play an important role in promoting health. Studies
have found that only at secondary or higher levels of schooling does education
have a significant beneficial effect on women’s own health outcomes, for risks
of disease, and their attitudes toward female genital cutting (Malhotra, Pande,