Conditional Cash Transfer and Educational Gender Gaps: Insights from Bangladeshi Households

Nazmul Chaudhury, World Bank Group
Mohammad N. Asadullah, University of Reading

This paper documents a reverse gender gap in secondary schooling outcomes in Bangladesh, drawing upon nationally representative household survey data. In terms of enrollment status and years of schooling completed, boys are found to lag behind girls in the rural as well as urban areas. This finding is robust to extensive control for demand and supply-side determinants of schooling and common family unobservables. We test to what extent the reversal of the gender gap in secondary school outcomes in urban area is driven by a conditional cash transfer program – female secondary school stipend program. Whilst boys residing in the program area have more education compared to those in the non-program area, they fare poorly when compared to girls. Boys are also more likely to be in child-labour in the program area. Consequently urban gender-gap is widest in the treatment area. We consider a number of hypotheses to reconcile these findings.