Decomposing the Gender Gap in Cognitive Skills in a Poor Rural Economy
利用巴基斯坦农村数据，分析教育产出（认知技能）的性别差距，发现增加当地学校可及性可缩小约三分之一的认知差距，并指出需求侧政策对进一步缩小差距至关重要。
Girls lag markedly behind boys in education in many developing countries, which may slow economic growth and increase inequity. This paper uses indicators of the output of the education production process, cognitive skills, to characterize and to investigate the determinants of the large educational gender gap in rural Pakistan. Local school availability accounts for about a third of the total cognitive achievement gender gap and over two-fifths of that in numeracy, which implies that policies that increased local school availability for girls could reduce substantially the gender gaps in cognitive skills. To further reduce these gender gaps will require policies that focus on the demand side of the market, where, our results suggest, the response to modest changes in incentives may be high.