Not Educating Girls Costly to Countries, Reveals World Bank

Limited educational opportunities for girls and barriers to completing 12 years of education cost countries between $15 trillion and $30 trillion in lost lifetime productivity and earnings.

According to the World Bank, less than two-thirds of girls in low-income countries complete primary school, and only one in three girls complete lower secondary school.

On average, women who have a secondary education are more likely to work and they earn almost twice as much as those with no education.

Other positive effects of secondary school education for girls include a wide range of social and economic benefits for the girls themselves, their children and their communities including near-elimination of child marriage, lowering fertility rates by a third in countries with high population growth, and reducing child mortality and malnutrition.

Over the past two decades, many countries have reached universal primary education, and girls’ enrolment at the primary level in developing countries rivals that of boys. But this is not enough. Much larger benefits of education, as the analysis finds, would come from completing secondary school.

Today, some 132 million girls around the world between the ages of 6 and 17 are still not in school,75 percent of whom are adolescents. To reap the full benefits of education, countries need to improve both access and quality so that all girls have the opportunity to learn.

It is estimated that the return on one year of secondary education for a girl correlates with as high as a 25 percent increase in wages and that ensuring that all girls get at least secondary education in sub-Saharan Africa, would reduce child marriages by more than half.

Girls who stay out of school especially in their teen are at great risk.  The statistics are worrying: one in every five adolescent girls have either had a live birth or is pregnant with her first child. Among the 19-year olds, this doubles to two out of ten. Kenya Demographic Health Survey estimates that 18  percent of girls aged 15 – 19 become pregnant every year in the country.

As a country, we have much work to do, with figures showing that about half of Kenyan women only have primary school education. This means that their potential for participating in socio-economic processes is hampered, and their families are almost assured to spend their futures struggling economically.

World Bank reveals that in Sub-Saharan Africa, only 40 percent of girls complete lower secondary school. Countries also need policies to support healthy economic growth that will generate jobs for an expanding educated workforce.

Women with secondary education also have a better ability to make decisions in their household, including for their own health care. They are less likely to experience intimate partner violence, and they report higher levels of psychological well-being. They also have healthier children who are less likely to be malnourished and who are more likely to go to school and learn.

Furthermore, better education for girls makes them more likely to participate fully in society and be active members of their community.

Educating girls and promoting gender equality is part of a broader and holistic effort put in place by World Bank, which includes financing and analytical work to remove financial barriers that keep girls out of school, prevent child marriage, improve access to reproductive health services, and strengthen skills and job opportunities for adolescent girls and young women.

Since 2016, the World Bank has invested more than $3.2 billion in education projects benefiting adolescent girls.