The Gender Education Gap in China: The Power of Water

Yasheng Maimaiti and William Siebert ()

No 4108, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We investigate girls' school dropout rates, bringing forward a novel variable: access to water. We hypothesise that a girl's education suffers when her greater water need for female hygiene purposes after menarche is not met because her household has poor access to water. For testing we use data from rural villages in the China Health and Nutrition Survey. We find that menarche is associated with an increase in the school dropout rate, and indeed the effect is weaker for girls who have good access to water. Water engineering can thus contribute significantly to reducing gender education gaps in rural areas.

Keywords: education; gender gaps; menarche; water; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 J16 L95 O15 Q25 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2009-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna, nep-dev, nep-edu, nep-hrm, nep-lab and nep-tra
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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