The Reversal of the Gender Education Gap with Economic Development

Ying Feng, Jie Ren and Michelle Petersen Rendall

No 17786, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: The strikingly large gender education gap in low-income countries robustly narrows and reverses with economic development. To study the driving forces quantitatively, we propose a three-sector framework in which development features exogenous skill-biased technological change, structural change, gender-biased technological change, changes in marriage markets, and home productivity improvement. The model is parameterized to match contrasting labor market outcomes by education and gender across the development spectrum. Counterfactual exercises show that skill-biased technological change and structural change explain most of the narrowing gender education gap. Our model suggests that the marketization of services becomes important only after economics are sufficiently developed.

Keywords: Development; Structural change; Skill-biased technical change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 I25 J16 J24 O41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-01
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