The price of not educating girls
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| Failing to educate girls costs developing countries a staggering US$92bn a year |
 | May 2008: The authors of a recent Plan report have claimed that the economic cost of failing to educate girls to the same standard as boys is a staggering US$92 billion each year.
This is just less than the $103bn annual overseas development aid budget of the entire developed world.
The report, “Paying the Price – The Economic Cost of Failing to Educate Girls” is based on World Bank research and economic data, and UNESCO education statistics.
Unfortunately, despite recent improvements, girls’ education is still too often seen as an unnecessary luxury in many male dominated societies. Even worse, it may be opposed by men fearful of the effect increased female independence may have on traditional communities.
A 63-country study by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) found that more productive farming as a result of female education accounted for 43 per cent of the decline in malnutrition achieved between 1970 and 1995.
Research suggests that increasing the share of women with secondary education by one percentage point increases a country’s annual per capita income growth by an average of 0.3 percentage points.
Countries in South and West Asia and sub-Saharan Africa have the worst record on educating girls to secondary level. India alone misses out on potential economic growth worth about $33bn per annum. Other major losers include Turkey ($20bn) and Russia ($9.8bn).
Nine countries in sub-Saharan Africa have a gap of 10 percentage points or more between the proportion of girls to boys educated to secondary level. Yet, despite this poor record, the region’s total lost annual growth ($5.3bn) is limited by the small size of its economies.
Plan invests more in education than any other programme area and works to ensure children and adults in the communities it works in get the basic learning and life skills they need to realise their full potential.
Last year, Plan trained 80,799 teachers, built or rehabilitated 7,533 child-friendly schools and worked with thousands of communities to promote girls’ education.
Download the report:
Paying the price: The economic cost of failing to educate girls (1.2mb | 12 pages)
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