age groups in Pakistan with female advantages of 5 and 10 percentage points, respectively. It is interesting to note that Muslim countries such as Bangladesh and Pakistan have female advantage in private enrollment. Perhaps in these countries there is a relatively strong positive correlation between a less patriarchal culture (i.e. less of a bias against females) in the household and the likelihood of sending children to private school.

12. Private school enrollment is concentrated in urban areas and among the wealthiest households. Figure 1 shows stark contrasts between rural and urban areas, and between the lowest and highest income quintiles in India, Nepal and Pakistan, where the majority of private schooling is unsubsidized by the government, and therefore subject more directly to household income. Even in rural areas, such as rural Punjab, Pakistan, Andrabi et al. (2007) find disproportionately more private schools in larger and richer villages, and in richer and more literate settlements within villages. Similarly, Cameron (2011) reports that in Dhaka, Bangladesh, even among urban slum households, children of wealthier and better-educated parents are more likely to go to a private primary school. These patterns are consistent with the unsubsidized nature of the majority of private schooling, which calls for the ability to afford the costs, as well as greater availability of supply-side factors such as teachers and infrastructure in more affluent and urban areas. An exception is the rural advantage in the 16-18 age group in Bangladesh, perhaps to an important extent due to the FSSAP initiative that subsidizes secondary schooling for girls in rural areas, and most secondary schools are private aided.

13. Figure 2 shows a snapshot of how private schooling has grown in recent years, according to household survey data. Over a recent period of approximately five years, private school enrollment has increased at a faster rate than total enrollment for all the three age groups in Nepal, and for the 6-10 age group in Bangladesh, while decreasing slightly for the 11-15 age group in Pakistan and the 16-18 age group in Bangladesh and barely changing for the other country- and age-groups. (There is only one year of household survey data for Afghanistan.) Older household survey data reveal that, over a prior period of approximately eight years, the increasing trend in the share of private schooling in Nepal was already present. An increasing trend can also be seen for all the three age groups in Pakistan, and for the 16-18 age group in Bangladesh over this earlier period. Overall, what stands out in the picture is stronger growth in private school enrollment than in total enrollment in some parts of the region in the last decade or so.

14. To provide further evidence on over-time trends, information on the school establishment date available in school census data for Bangladesh (2006), India (2009/10), Nepal (2009/10) and Pakistan (2005) allows a look at a longer history. Figure 3 shows that most private (aided and unaided) schools are significantly younger than government schools. There could be two reasons for this: (1) private schools have been founded more recently, and (2) private schools have shorter lifetimes. The large age difference between the two school types, combined with the increasing trend in the share of private school enrollment seen in Figure 2, indicates that the expansion of private schooling is a recent phenomenon. The stark increases in private school foundation in Bangladesh in the 1970s and in Pakistan in the 1980s coincide with the reversals of a period of school nationalization in these countries in 1973 and 1979, respectively. The differential in foundation dates is considerably more gradual for India, perhaps because in India privately managed schools date back to the colonial times, and there has been no interrupting school nationalization period as in Bangladesh and Pakistan. Moreover, except in Bangladesh, private schools in rural areas tend to be younger than in urban areas, suggesting stronger recent 8