Gender disparities in primary education across siblings: is intra household disparity higher in regions with low child sex ratios?

Husain, Zakir and Dutta, Mousumi and Saha, Manashi (2011): Gender disparities in primary education across siblings: is intra household disparity higher in regions with low child sex ratios?

Abstract

Strong son preference in developing countries often motivates parents to undertake sex selection at birth, infanticide, and subsequent neglect of daughters, leading to low child sex ratios in these countries. An interesting question is whether such attitudes also lead to gender discrimination in primary education. While there is a vast literature on inter-household gender discrimination in education, studies of discrimination between siblings is comparatively rare. This paper asks the question: Do parents tend to educate sons more than daughters? Using unit level National Sample Survey Organization data for the 61st Round (2004-2005), we analyze disparity in primary educational attainments between siblings and examine whether such intra-household disparity is higher in areas where child sex ratios are low. Findings indicate that parental attitude towards education and practices may be more complicated and less uniformly negative at lower levels of education than commonly portrayed.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Education, Gender, Sibling, India
• Subjects: I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I2 - Education and Research Institutions > I21 - Analysis of Education; C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C2 - Single Equation Models ; Single Variables > C25 - Discrete Regression and Qualitative Choice Models ; Discrete Regressors ; Proportions ; Probabilities; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J1 - Demographic Economics > J16 - Economics of Gender ; Non-labor Discrimination

References

Agarwal, B. 1994. A Field of One's Own: Gender and land rights in South Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Alam, M. and G. G. Kingdon. 2008. “Gender and household educational expenditure in Pakisthan,” Applied Economics 40(20): 2573-2591.

Alkire, S. 2010. Human Development: Definitions, Critiques, and Related Concepts. Human Development Research Paper 2010/01, UNDP.

Behrman, J. R. and R. A. Pollack and P. Taubman. 2007. From parent to child: Intra-household allocations and inter-generational relations in the US. Chicago, Illinois: university of Chicago.

Chen, S. H., Y-C Chen and J-T. Liu. 2007. Separate effects of sibling gender and family size on educational achievements – Methods and first evidence from population registry. Discussion Papers in Economics No. 09/03, Department of Economics, Royal Holloway University of London.

Boissiere, M. 2004. Determinants of Primary Education Outcomes in Developing Countries. Background paper for evaluation of the World’s Bank support to primary education, Washington: The World Bank.

Brant, R. 1990. “Assessing Proportionality in the Proportional Odds Model for Ordered Logit Regression,” Biometrics 46(4): 1171-1178.

Brown, P. H. and A. Park. 2002. “Education and Poverty in Rural China,” Economics of Education Review 21(6): 532-41.

Connelly, R. and Z. Zheng. 2003. “Determinants of School Enrolment and Completion of 10-18 Year Ilds in China,” Economics of Education Review 22(4): 379 88.

Dasgupta, M. 1987. “Selective discrimination against female children in India,” Population and Development Review 13(1): 77-100.

Dasgupta, M. 2006. “Cultural versus biological factors in explaining Asia’s missing women: Response to Oster,” Population and Development Review 31(3): 529-535.

Deaton. A. 1997. The analysis of household surveys: A microeconometric approach to development. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.

Delelegn, A. 2007. “Intra-household gender bias in child educational spending in rural Ethopia”, Ethopian Journal of Economics 16(2), viewed 4 April 2011 <http://www.ajol.info/index.php/eje/cart/view/46186/32587>

Deolalikar, A. B. 1993. “Gender Differences in the Returns to Schooling and in School Enrollment Rates in Indonesia,” The Journal of Human Resources XXVIII, 4: pp. 899-932.

Desai, S. and V. Kulkarni. 2008. “Changing Educational Inequalities in India in the Context of Affirmative Action,” Demography 45(2), 245-270.

Dréze, J. and G. G. Kingdon. 2001. “School Participation in Rural India,” Review of Development Economics 5(1): 1-24.

Fairlie, W. R. 2005. “An Extension of the Blinder-Oaxaca Decomposition Technique to Logit and Probit Models,” Journal of Economic and Social measurement 30: 305-316.

Hadden, K. and B. London. 1996. “Educating Girls in the Third World: The Demographic, Basic Needs, and Economic Benefits,” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 37:1-2.

Hannum, E. C., P. A. Kong and Y. Zhang. 2008. Family sources of educational gender inequality in rural China: A critical assessment, China Human Capital Projects, Gansu Survey of Children and Families, University of Pennyslvania.

Irving, M. and G. G. Kingdon. 2008. "Gender patterns in household health expenditure allocation: A study of South Africa," CSAE Working Paper Series 2008-32, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.

Knight, J. 2010. “Son preference and household income in rural China,” Journal of Development Studies 46(10): 1786-1805.

Lin, M-J. and M-C. Luoh. 2008. “Can Hepatitis B mothers account for the number of missing women? Evidence from new million newborns in Taiwan,” American Economic Review 98(5): 2259-2273.

Lin, M-J., J-T. Liu and N. Qian. 2010. “More Missing Women, Fewer Girls Dying: The Impact of Abortion on Sex Ratios at Birth and Excess Female Mortality in Taiwan”, Mimeograph. Yale University, viewed 4 April 2011 <http://www.econ.yale.edu/~nq3/NANCYS_Yale_Website/Research_files/LinLiuQian_201002.pdf>

Lundberg, S. J. and E. Rose. 2002. “The effect of sons and daughters on men’s labour supply and wages,” Review of Economics and Statistics 84 (2): 251-268.

Lockheed, M. 2010. Gender and social exclusion. Education Policy Series, No. 12, International Academy of Education & International Institute for Education Planning, UNESCO.

Kingdom, G. G. 2001. “The Gender Gap in Educational Attainment in India: How Much Can Be Explained?,” Journal of Development Studies 39(2): 25-53.

Kingdon, G. G. and N. Theopold. 2008. “Do returns to education matter to schooling participation? Evidence from India,” Educational Economics 16(4): 329-350.

McCullagh, P. 1980. “Regression models for ordinal data,” Journal of Royal Statistical Society, Series B 42: 109-142.

Mehta, A. 2010. Elementary Education in India: Progress towards UEF, 2007-08, Analytical Tables. New Delhi: National University of Educational Planning and Adminsitration, and Department of School Education and Literacy, Ministry of Human Resource Development.

Mellor, M. 2010. “Narrowing the gender gap in education: Evidence from a girl focused supply side intervention in rural India,” Mimeograph. Department of Economics, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, viewed 23 April, 2011 <http://www.econ.upf.edu/eng/graduates/gpem/jm/pdf/paper/meller.pdf>

Nanda, A. and J. Véron. 2005. “Child sex ratio imbalances, fertility behaviour and development in India: Recent evidence from Haryana and Punjab,” in I. Attańe and J. Véron (eds.) Gender discrimination among young children in Asia. Pondicherry: French Institute of Pondicherry, pp. 91-131.

Oaxaca, R. L. 1973. “Male-female wage differences in urban labour markets,” International Economic Review 14, 693-709.

Oster, E. 2005. “Hepatitis B and the case of missing women,” Journal of Political Economy 113(6): 1163-1216.

PROBE. 1999. Public Report on Basic Education in India. (New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Sahni, M., N. Verma, D. Narula, R.M. Varghese, V. Seenivas and J. M. Puliyel. 2008. “Missing girls in India: Infanticide, foeticide and made-to-order pregnancies? Insights from Hospital-based sex ratio-at-birth over the last century,” PloS One 3(5), 21 May.

Sathar, Z. A., and C. B. Lloyd. 1994. “Who gets primary schooling in Pakistan: Inequalities among and within families,” The Pakistan Development Review 33(2), 103–134.

Sen, A. K. 1990. “Gender and Co-operative Conflicts,” I. Tinker (ed) Persistent Inequalities: Women and World Development. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 123-149.

Sen, A. K. 1992. “Missing women,” British Medical Journal 304 (7 March): 587-588. Sen, A. K. 2003. “Missing women – revisited,” British Medical Journal 327 (6 December): 1297-1298.

Sen, G. and S. Batliawala. 2000. “Empowering women for reproductive rights,” in H. Presser and G. Sen (ed.) Women’s empowerment and demographic processes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 3-14.

Sen, G., A. Iyer and C. Mukherjee. 2009. “A Methodology to Analyse the Intersections of Social Inequalities in Health,” International Journal of Human Development and Capabilities 2009: 10(3): 397 – 415

United Nations Development Group. 2003. Indicators for monitoring the Millennium Development Goals: Definitions, rationale, concepts and sources. New York: United Nations.

UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). 2005. Global Education Digest 2005. Montreal: UIS.

Williams, R. 2006. "Generalized Ordered Logit/ Partial Proportional Odds Models for Ordinal Dependent Variables," The Stata Journal 6(1):58-82.