Reaching the marginalized: EFA global monitoring report, 2010; 2010

100CHAPTER 32Education for All Global Monitoring ReportIn Egypt,rich urban girlsaverageten years ineducation,declining tounder five yearsfor poorrural girlsFigure 3.2: Slow progress for Africa’s poorest children% of the population that has never attended school, by age group,sub-Saharan Africa, and South and West Asia, circa 2005% of the population that has never been to school8070605040302010023–27 17–22 7–16Age groupNotes: SSA stands for sub-Saharan Africa, SWA for South and West Asia.Estimates are population weighted averages.Source: UNESCO-DME (2009).SSA poorest 20% girlsSSA poorest 20%SWA poorest 20% girlsSWA poorest 20%SSA richest 20%SWA richest 20%Inequalities stemming from income and genderhelp explain the inconsistent relationship betweennational wealth and acute deprivation in education.Average years of education tend to rise anddeprivation to diminish as income rises, butcountries vary enormously in the degree to whichthey convert rising income into declining educationdeprivation (Figure 3.3). Comparisons acrosscountries at different levels of income revealsome striking results for those aged 17 to 22:While it has a per capita income comparable toViet Nam’s, Pakistan has more than three timesthe share of the age group with fewer than fouryears of education.With double the average income level of Lesotho,Morocco has twice the population share withfewer than four years of education.At the same average income level as Egypt,Jordan has an incidence of education povertyseven times lower.Average income in Gabon and Turkey is morethan double the level in the Dominican Republic,but all three countries have comparablepopulation shares below the four-year threshold.Such comparisons caution against assumingthat economic growth automatically dissolvesextreme deprivation in education. Wealthincreases the resources available to householdsand governments for investment in education.Yet the high levels of variation point to theimportance of other factors in expandingopportunity for the disadvantaged – notably,the effectiveness of public policies.Income and gender disparities do not operate inisolation. Education inequalities in both dimensionsintersect with inequalities linked to location,ethnicity, language, disability and other factorsto limit opportunity and reinforce marginalization.In many countries, rural households in generaland poor rural households in particular lag farbehind their urban counterparts. Rural locationcompounds wealth and gender disadvantages,reflecting the impact of cultural attitudes andthe unequal burden of household labour. It alsointersects with the wider patterns of group-baseddeprivation captured in Figure 3.4:In Egypt, income differences overlap with ruralurbanand gender divides. Rich urban boys andgirls both average just over ten years in education.Poor rural males average fewer than eight years,declining to under five years for girls. The ruralpart of Upper Egypt is an area of particularlydeep disadvantage. Over 40% of the populationlives in poverty and rural females in the regionaverage just over four years of schooling – a levelsimilar to the national average in Côte d’Ivoire.India’s wealth divides in education are among thelargest in the world – and they are reinforced byregional and gender disparities. While the richest20% average over eleven years in school, thepoorest have an average education expectancythat places them just above the four year‘education poverty line’. Poor rural females arewell below that line. Averaging three years ineducation, they are in a position comparable tothe national average for Chad. The average poorrural woman aged 17 to 22 in Bihar averagesfewer than two years in education.In Nigeria, the average poor rural female isjust above the two-year threshold for extremeeducation deprivation, with less than 40% thenational average for years of school and aroundone-quarter the average for rich urban males.There is a three-year gap between poor rural142