Page 18 World Bank l989b). Investments in human capital for women -- especially education, but also health and family planning services - - are appealing not only because they pay off for society and for the family but because they also pay off for women. Women's education cannot be taken from them. It can, of course, be wasted or eroded through non-use. But it is capital that women carry with them.

# Women's Education

36. Economic returns to female education. The case for female education is well established and powerful. For women as for men, the accumulated evidence underscores the singular importance of education as a way of breaking out of old molds -- of gaining access to more kinds of work, of earning higher income, of improving family welfare, of changing childbearing paL.terns -- in short, of increasing options. Investments in women's education produce about the same relative private internal rates of return as invest'ients in men's education as measured by the proportional increase in wage rates after education (Schultz 1989).

37. Most research, however, does not adequately correct for the potential bias introduced because market wage rates can be observed only for a selected sample of people -- those who have jobs. Recent research that does make such corrections -- notably research in Peru and Thailand - - generally confirms strong rates of return on women's education at the primary and secondary level but would reduce previous estimates of the rates of return on university education (Schultz 1989; King forthcoming; Khandker forthcoming). The return at the secondary level is very high in both Peru and Thailand.

38. Other evidence (for example, in Kenya and Nepal) also confirms the longstanding theory that education is particularly important in enabling people to respond to and capitalize on a changing environment. Several years of education may sometimes be needed to equip peoplo to respond. This has obvious implications for girls who tend to drop out of school after a few years, and sooner than boys (Jamison and Moock 1984).

39. Social returns to female education. The payoff of women's education in improved family welfare and smaller family size is also solidly established. Educated women generally tend to prefer smaller families (the relationship is clearer when research adjusts for the husband's education and income.) Women's education generally contributes more than men's education to children's health and nutrition and possibly their learning (see box) (Cochrane and others 1980; Caldwell 1979; Schultz 1989). Studies in the 1970s and 1980s in demography, economics, anthropology, sociology, and medicine concluded that a strong, probably causal, link existed between increases in a mother's schooling and decreases in the incidence of mortality among her own children. An added year of maternal education is generally associated with a 5 to 10 percent reduction in child mortality (Schultz 1989). Although the level of mortality tends to be higher in rural than in urban areas, maternal education has a similar proportional effect in either location (Schultz 1989; Cochrane and others 1980). Schooling gives mothers knowledge and confidence to try new ideas. Since these economic and family-welfare returns on women's education are internal to the family, why do families not invest equally in education for girls and boys?