**Policy Research**

## **Development Economics**

# WPS 905

This paper, by the Vice President, Development Economics, and Chief Economist, World Bank, was prepared for the Quad-i-Azan Lecture at the Eighth Annual General Meeting of the Pakistan Society of Development Economists in Islamabad, Pakistan, in January 1992. Copies of the paper are available free from the World Bank, 1818 H Street NW, Washington, DC 20433. Please contact Maria Fernandez, room S9-035, extension 33766 (26 pages, including tables).

Recent research has convinced Summers that once all the benefits are recognized, investment in the education of girls may be the highest return investment available in the developing world - and it is an especially iiigh priority for Pakistan. Summers stresses five points to make his case for action: Tens of millions of women (perhaps as many as 100 million) are missing worldwide mainly because of higher death rates for young girls than boys. .gher death rates are symptomatic of the more general pattem of female deprivation in the developing world, especially in South Asia.

other things, women spend more of their income on children than their husbands do, and educated women are more likely co seek medical care and to improve sanitation prac ices. Educated women choose to have fewer children and can provide more for those they do have.

- Giving an extra 100 girls an additional year of education in 1990 would have cost approximately $30,000. This investment would prevent roughly 60 infant deaths and three matemal deaths - and avert 500 births. Summers concludes that the social benefits alone of increased female education are more than sufficient to cover its costs.

- Underinvestment in girls is an economic problem resulting from a vicious cycle caused by distorted incentives. Parents don't invest in their daughters because they expect them to grow up to serve only their husbands; uneducated women have few alternatives, so the expectation becomes self-fulfilling.

* Increasing educational opporlunities for girls offers the best chanec of breaking this vicious cycle. Considering both private benefits and retums to other family members, it is perhaps the best yielding return of all investments available in developing countries. Among

> ***** Programs to increase female education are less expensive than other development investments and could quickly increase female enrollment rates. Priorities should be to reduce the cost of schooling for girls and to make special efforts to accommodate parents's practical needs.

* Major initiatives to increase female education can transform society over time. If more girls had gone to school a generation ago, millions of infant deaths could have been averted each year, and tens of millions of families could have been healthier and happier.

> i ThePolicy Research Working Paper Scricsdisseminates thc findings of work under way in the Bank. Anobjecti cofthe scrics is to get these findings out quickly, even if presentations arc less than fully polished. Thc findings. intcrprctations, and conclusions in thcsc papers do not necessarily reprcsent official Bank policy.

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