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The Role of Age and Gender in Educational Expansion: The South Asian Experience in the Global Context
Author(s) -
Sauer Petra
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
review of income and wealth
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.024
H-Index - 57
eISSN - 1475-4991
pISSN - 0034-6586
DOI - 10.1111/roiw.12437
Subject(s) - inequality , context (archaeology) , kuznets curve , educational inequality , demographic economics , globe , distribution (mathematics) , economics , population , sample (material) , gini coefficient , demography , development economics , economic growth , economic inequality , geography , sociology , psychology , mathematics , archaeology , mathematical analysis , chemistry , chromatography , neuroscience
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 educational inequality to evolve in waves as education expands.