.@PJakiela, @maryamakmal, and I have a new working paper out today: “Gender Gaps in Education: The Long View” which draws on 50 years of data from 126 countries. cgdev.org/publication/ge… [thread] 
We document four facts about changes in gender gaps in education over time, using the Barro-Lee data on educational attainment among the population age 15 and above (barrolee.com).
Because we focus on educational attainment among all people age 15 and above, changes happen more slowly than if one were to focus on just the youngest cohorts. But this captures the current adult population, which is relevant for the education level of the society.
Fact 1: Women are more educated today than at any point in history. You can see this in each region of the world that includes low- and middle-income countries.
Fact 2: Women are still not as educated as men. The median gender gap has narrowed from 0.8 fewer years of schooling for women in 1960 to just 0. 3 fewer years in 2010, but “in every region of the world, women are still more likely to have no schooling than men.”
Fact 3: Gender gaps often got worse before they got better. “The gender gap deteriorated before beginning to improve for 96 (76 percent) of the 126 countries in our sample.”
“The gender gap deteriorated before beginning to improve for 96 (76 percent) of the 126 countries in our sample.”
The widening of the gender gap was most likely in countries where both male and female rates of schooling were low in 1960.
Fact 4: Gender gaps rarely persist in educated countries. “Countries where gender gaps are large tend to be the same countries where boys are also getting a low level of education.”
In fact, “a disproportionate number of these countries also perform poorly on other measures of development — for example, life expectancy, GDP per capita, and measures of state capacity.”
What does the future hold? “By 2010, women had more education than men in 36/126 countries in our data set.” In the paper, we map which countries are moving in the right direction and which are not.
Education is a human right, it has inherent value, & it yields a wide range of benefits. But “education is not a silver bullet leading to women’s empowerment & gender equality.” Higher educational equality has not translated to increased labor force equality, for example.
In this paper, we focus on educational attainment. Obviously how much girls (and boys) learn in school matters a great deal as well. More work on gender gaps in learning is coming soon!
Lastly, two key footnotes. First, we assigned author order using the American Economic Association’s Author Randomization Tool. aeaweb.org/journals/polic…
Second, @PJakiela and @Fihi_maFihi presented some early analysis from these data in their blog post from last year “Mind the Gap: 5 Facts About The Gender Gap in Education.” cgdev.org/blog/mind-gap-…
Here's to a future world with equal educational (and overall) opportunity for all children. Thank you for reading! [end of thread]
