The Role of Age and Gender in Educational Expansion: The South Asian Experience in the Global Context

• Published date: 01 November 2019
• Author: Petra Sauer
• Date: 01 November 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/roiw.12437

© 2019 Internation al Association for Re search in Inco me and Wealth

S153

THE ROLE OF AGE AND GENDER IN EDUCATIONAL EXPANSION:

THE SOUTH ASIAN EXPERIENCE IN THE GLOBAL CONTEXT

by Petra Sauer*

Vienna Un iversity of Economics a nd Business

I calculate education Gini coefficients and decompose the overall degree of educational inequality into

age, sex, and within-group components for 171 countries from 1970 to 2010. Doing so enables me to

analyze the distributional outcomes of educational expansion. I use South Asia as a case study, as the

education distribution in the region is among the most unequal in the world. Generally, educational

inequality is decreasing over the observed sample period around the globe. Yet, as improvements are

initiated by enhancing the educational opportunities of the young, the gap between cohorts widens in

transition phases but vanishes thereafter. Gaps between the sexes are reduced substantially, but widen

if either males or females are the first to enter higher education levels. Also, gaps within population

subgroups follow a similar trajectory. Instead of a Kuznets-curve relation, I thus find evidence for edu-

cational inequality to evolve in waves as education expands.

JEL Codes: I24, I25

Keywords: educational attainment, educational inequality, age, gender

1. IntroductIon

Over the past decades, education has been rapidly expanding around the

globe. Not least as a consequence of the United Nations’ Millennium Development

Goal (MDG) to achieve universal primary education by 2015, educational expan-

sion entails rising population shares with primary and secondary education in low-

and middle-income countries. According to Dorius (2012), “we are now fast

approaching the time when primary schooling will be a universal fact of life virtu-

ally everywhere.” In India, for example, 60 percent of the population aged 20–39

did not have any formal education in 1970 and secondary attainment shares were

negligible. By 2010, the share of unschooled people had fallen to 26 percent, while

primary and secondary attainment shares had increased to 15 percent and 26 per-

cent, respectively.1 In contrast, the minimum level of education that people in

1These figures are obtained from the Wittgenstein Centre Data Explorer.

*Note: I am grateful to Apoorva Gupta, Bilal Foudad Barakat, two anonymous referees, and col-

leagues at the Research Institute “Economics of Inequality,” as well as participants at the 2018 Canazei

Winter School of Inequality and Social Welfare Theory, and at the 2017 IARIW–ICRIER conference

on “Experiences and Challenges in Measuring Income, Inequality, and Poverty in South Asia,” for

helpful comments and discussions.

Correspondence to: Petra Sauer, Centre for Pluralist Economics, Anglia Ruskin University, East

Road, Cambridge CB11PT (petra.sauer@anglia.ac.uk) and Research Institute Economics of Inequality

(INEQ), Vienna University of Economics and Business (petra.sauer@wu.ac.at).

Review of Inc ome and Wealth

Series 65, Numb er S1, November 2019

DOI : 10.1111 /roi w.124 37

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Review of Income and Wealth, Series 65, Number S1, November 2019

S154

© 2019 Internation al Association for Re search in Inco me and Wealth

high-income countries are going for is the upper-secondary level (Ballarino etal.,

2013), and tertiary attainment figures have been continuously increasing since the

second half of the 20th century (Schofer and Meyer, 2005).2 Pronounced dynamics

in the global education structure raise questions about the distributional conse-

quences of educational expansion. In this regard, the distribution of education is

of particular interest. It not only shapes the equalizing impact of rising educa-

tional attainment on the income distribution (see, among others, Ballarino etal.,

2013; Checchi and van de Werfhorst, 2017; Cruces etal., 2011), but also the extent

to which human capital accumulation positively affects the growth prospects of

nations (Castelló and Doménech, 2002; Sauer and Zagler, 2012, 2014).

Different degrees of educational inequality across countries over time result

from the extent to which policies are able to enlarge the group of people who par-

ticipate in education. This is done by improving the educational opportunities of

women as well as of people from disadvantaged backgrounds. In both respects,

providing for enhanced schooling prospects of the young secures improved educa-

tional outcomes of future generations. Consequently, different educational expan-

sion trajectories result from different magnitudes of human capital accumulation

and equalization among the young, between men and women, and between indi-

viduals within demographic groups.

Existing research shows that the distribution of educational attainment within

countries becomes more equal as education expands (Castelló and Doménech,

2002; Sauer and Zagler, 2012, 2014). Morrisson and Murtin (2013) and Castelló

and Doménech (2002) demonstrate that the strong negative relation between edu-

cational inequality and average educational attainment that has been revealed in

cross-country comparisons is mechanical and due to the decline in illiteracy. The

findings of Sauer and Zagler (2012, 2014) and Meschi and Scervini (2013) provide

evidence that a behavioral relationship exists within countries over time. According

to Meschi and Scervini (2013), educational inequality has substantially declined in

the transition toward universal basic education, but expansion of post-secondary

education tends to increase the degree of inequality in the distribution of educa-

tional attainment. This contrasts with the hypothesis of an educational Kuznets

curve, which implies that inequality should rise before it declines in the process of

educational expansion.

By now, studies concerned with the distribution of education have treated

all individuals within countries equally. An exception is the analysis of Crespo-

Cuaresma etal. (2013), who investigate age-group and gender-specific distributions

of education. Their findings indicate that educational improvements typically entail

rising education levels of the young compared to the elderly and might affect males

and females differently. In this paper, I contribute to the literature by providing an

integrated analysis of the evolution of gaps within and between demographic sub-

groups of the population. For a global panel of countries, I thus decompose over-

all educational inequality into age, gender, and within-group components. Using

2However, Ballarino etal. (2013) show that this process does not apply equally across high-income

countries. While the share of the population with tertiary education approaches 50 percent in the

United Kingdom and in Nordic countries, the expansion process slows down at 30 percent in

Continental, Mediterranean, and Eastern European countries.