Educational Attainment in Developing Countries: New Estimates and Projections Disaggregated by Gender

The authors present new estimates of educational attainment in 71 developing countries for the years 1985, 1990 and 1995. They also project levels of educational attainment through the year 2020 by using the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization's projections of enrollment and the International Labor Organization's projections of population by age and sex. The projections suggest interesting trends: 1) growth of stock in human capital is expected to be highest in the Middle East and North Africa and lowest in sub-Saharan Africa; 2) South Asia -- currently the least educated part of the world is expected to substantially augment its stock of human capital by the year 2020; 3) in most regions, enrollment levels are expected to remain lower for girls than boys; and 4) the gender gap in education may have risen in the past decade, this trend toward a widening of the gender gap may continue unless countries intensify their efforts to educate girls.

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Journal of Educational and Social Research, 2015

The importance of education in the development of human capital has been broadly acknowledged. It has also been argued that improving access to education is central in the achievement of poverty reduction and other millennium development goals (MDGs) in Africa. Gender inequalities remain manifest in many development sectors in Africa including the educational sector. The main objective of this paper was to examine current gender disparity trends in education in sub-Saharan Africa. The paper reviews literature to investigate the nature of gender gaps in educational enrolment and attainment in sub-Saharan Africa. The main objective is to understand the main factors that contribute to the continued disparities between males and females from primary school level through to university level. The paper finds that there is variety of socio-cultural and economic causes responsible for these disparities. The primary driver of poor educational enrolment and attainment has economic foundations. However, gender disparities are largely explained by cultural beliefs and attitudes.

Social Science Research Network, 2015

The importance of education in the development of human capital has been broadly acknowledged. It has also been argued that improving access to education is central in the achievement of poverty reduction and other millennium development goals (MDGs) in Africa. Gender inequalities remain manifest in many development sectors in Africa including the educational sector. The main objective of this paper was to examine current gender disparity trends in education in sub-Saharan Africa. The paper reviews literature to investigate the nature of gender gaps in educational enrolment and attainment in sub-Saharan Africa. The main objective is to understand the main factors that contribute to the continued disparities between males and females from primary school level through to university level. The paper finds that there is variety of socio-cultural and economic causes responsible for these disparities. The primary driver of poor educational enrolment and attainment has economic foundations. However, gender disparities are largely explained by cultural beliefs and attitudes.

This Paper explains the causes of the Gender Inequality of education and analyze how the gender inequality in education impacts the economic growth & development, investment and population growth etc. The paper finds that the gender inequality in education is as an endogenous variable and show that it can be explained to a considerable extent by religious preference, regional factors, and civil freedom. For some of these variables, the direction of the effect depends on the particular measure of inequality. The fact that these variables systematically explain gender differentials in education and health suggests that low investment in women’s human capital is not simply an efficient economic choice for developing countries.

Population and Development Review, 2010

2009

FIGURE 1 The world's growing human capital: World population by age, sex, and educational attainment in 1970 (top) and in Global Education Trend (GET) Scenarios for 2010 (middle) and 2050 (bottom).

Achieving progress in education is of fundamental importance for human development. Low levels of access to the education system and in educational outcomes in developing countries are often accompanied by high inequality between countries and within countries between population subgroups. This paper analyzes differences in improvements in the access to the education system and in educational outcomes across the welfare distribution between and within countries, and also by gender and regions for a sample of 37 developing countries using Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS). For the analysis, the toolbox of the growth incidence curves is applied to several educational indicators. We found an overall positive development in education. However, we do not identify a clear pro-poor trend in progress in education between and within countries. We do find strong differences in education between males and females and between rural and urban areas. While gender inequality tends to decrease slightly, large differences by region tend to persist over time.

1996

International organizations and researchers in the field of education and development have emphasized the importance of women's education for the social and economic development of Third World countries. However, women's educational levels are lower than men's in most countries throughout the world. This paper presents findings of a study that examined the impact of the educational gender gap on economic growth in developing countries. Methods involved correlation and regression analyses of two data sets-"Data Set for a Panel of 138 Countries" (Barro and Lee 1994) and "World Tables 1993" (World Bank). Gender gap variables included years of schooling, educational attainment, and school-enrollment rates. Findings indicate that almost all of the educational gender gap variables, except for the percentage of the population completing primary education, had positive effects on economic growth. Gender gaps at higher levels of education tended to have a stronger positive impact on economic growth. Men's educaticn had greater positive impacts on economic growth than did women's education. The surprising findings may be eAplained by the existence of a structural gender gap underlying the gap in education. In other words, there is another significant societal gender discrimination that makes the educational gender gap meaningless. Five tables are included. (LMI)

2015

section 107). Consistent with fair use as defined in the Copyright Laws, brief quotations from this material are allowed with proper acknowledgment. Use of this material for financial gain without the author's express written permission is not allowed. Abstract Females around the world face many challenges to obtaining an education. While there are many studies that document the benefit to female education as well as a few challenges that females face, there is not yet a study that summarizes major challenges to female education, particularly in modernizing countries, and the recent steps of various international organizations and businesses that address these challenges. This thesis helps to fill that void. It uses specific countries in the developing world, cross section of developing countries, which, in turn, highlight a few major problems that females encounter in pursuit of an education. It finds that the challenges to education, while not true of each country, include pov...