Gender Bias in Education: the Role of Inter‐household Externality, Dowry and other Social Institutions

Sajal Lahiri and Sharmistha Self

Review of Development Economics, 2007, vol. 11, issue 4, 591-606

Abstract: We analyze gender bias in school enrollment by developing a two‐period model where women become part of extended families of their in‐laws. Each family decides how many sons and daughters are sent to school and thus become skilled. Gender bias occurs due to failure of the families to internalize inter‐household externalities. “Groom‐specific” dowry worsens the situation. Under “bride‐specific” dowry, bias exists if and only if the skill premium in the labor market is bigger than that in the marriage market. A specific discriminatory “food‐for‐education” policy is shown to reduce bias, but increase total enrollment.

Date: 2007
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9361.2007.00387.x

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:rdevec:v:11:y:2007:i:4:p:591-606

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=1363-6669

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Development Economics is currently edited by E. Kwan Choi

More articles in Review of Development Economics from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().