(1999) who found that educational gender gaps have a direct and negative impact on economic growth.<sup>14</sup> The transmission channels from the education gender gap to growth are expected to vary along the stages of development and across countries. According to Barro and Lee (1996), the growth impact of female education is transmitted through its negative effect on fertility. Under the hypothesis of reduced fertility rate, the quantity-quality substitution in reproductive outcomes attained as a result of increased life expectancy improves female time use and time allocation, and hence their contribution to growth. At the same time, an increase in female human capital endowment may also enhance the growth process through the productivity channel [Hill and King (1995)].

Still, the correlation which has been the basis for inference in this section does not imply causation. While skill improvements through the reduction of educational gender gap may increase female labor force participation rates and growth under loosening social norms (either through productivity channels, fertility channels or both), the level of economic development may also affect gender equality, and specifically, the educational gender gap. Illustrating that dependency structure, longitudinal data and cross-country analysis have suggested a U-shaped relationship between female labor supply and economic development [Goldin (1995)].

The narrowing gender gap in education and increasing female labor force participation rates, especially in the rapidly growing economies of the region, may therefore be attributed to two concurrent factors: growth effects and loosening social norms and cultural beliefs over time.<sup>15</sup> In a dynamic setting of rapidly changing institutions, gender inequality should not expect to be constant over time or across countries. The expected contribution of women to growth in the region should therefore be positive and increase over time. The next sections draw on a growth accounting framework to estimate the relative contribution of women to growth over the last three decades.

# **III Analytical framework**

Standard growth accounting frameworks make it possible to decompose the change in output into the contribution of factors accumulation (generally labor and capital) and a residual measure of efficiency gains associated with the use of factor inputs.<sup>16</sup> The residual measure of efficiency is commonly known as total factor productivity, as it accounts for the portion of output that is not fully explained by used factor inputs. In practice, the application of these growth accounting frameworks

> 14 Similarly, from a neoclassical growth model that includes female and male enrollment rates, Knowles et al. (2002) find that the gender gap in education is a barrier to economic development. And Using Arellano-Bond estimations, Balliamoune-Lutz and McGillivray (2009) find that gender inequalities in literacy have a statistically significant and negative effect on growth in SSA.

> 15 In addition to the reduction of educational gender gaps and increased female labor force participation rates, other observable measures of reduction of gender inequality in the region include an increase in female life expectancy rates and reduction of gender wage differentials.

> 16 Growth accounts may also be viewed as a byproduct of the basic national accounting identity which relates the aggregate value of the final goods and services produced in a country (gross national product) to the total value of capital and labor used to produce the output (gross domestic income).

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