Women's Schooling, Home Teaching, and Economic Growth

TLDR: The hypothesis that increases in the schooling of women enhance the human capital of the next generation and thus make a unique contribution to economic growth is assessed on the basis of data describing green revolution India as discussed by the authors.

Abstract: The hypothesis that increases in the schooling of women enhance the human capital of the next generation and thus make a unique contribution to economic growth is assessed on the basis of data describing green revolution India. Estimates are obtained that indicate that a component of the significant and positive relationship between maternal literacy and child schooling in the Indian setting reflects the productivity effect of home teaching and that the existence of this effect, combined with the increase in returns to schooling for men, importantly underlies the expansion of female literary following the onset of the green revolution.

Figures

Fig. 4.—Time allocation of married farm women, by literacy and schooling: average hours per day in 1981–82.

TABLE 1

Fig. 2.—Literacy rates of farm newlyweds, by sex and date of marriage: 1962–81

TABLE 2

TABLE 6

Fig. 1.—Percentage married farm women and men working for nonagricultural wages or salaries: 1970–71 and 1981–82.

Full text

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Women’s Schooling, Home Teaching, and
Economic Growth
Jere R. Behrman
University of Pennsylvania
Andrew D. Foster
Brown University
Mark R. Rosenzweig
University of Pennsylvania
Prem Vashishtha
University of Delhi
The hypothesis that increases in the schooling of women enhance
the human capital of the next generation and thus make a unique
contribution to economic growth is assessed on the basis of data
describing green revolution India. Estimates are obtained that in-
dicate that a component of the significant and positive relationship
between maternal literacy and child schooling in the Indian setting
reflects the productivity effect of home teaching and that the exis-
tence of this effect, combined with the increase in returns to
schooling for men, importantly underlies the expansion of female
literacy following the onset of the green revolution.
The research for this paper was supported in part by grants from the National
Institutes of Health (HD30907) and the National Science Foundation (SBR93-
08405). Earlier versions were presented at Northwestern, the University of Chicago,
Berkeley, Brown, Cornell, Duke, the London School of Economics, University Col-
lege London, and Yale. We are grateful to an anonymous referee for helpful com-
ments.
[Journal of Political Economy, 1999, vol. 107, no. 4]
 1999 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0022-3808/99/0704-0001$02.50
682

women’s schooling 683
I. Introduction
Increased investment in schooling is often promoted as a key devel-
opment strategy aimed at promoting economic growth. Most of the
micro evidence that has been used to support the importance of
schooling in augmenting incomes in low-income countries comes
mainly from data describing the returns to schooling for men (e.g.,
Psacharopoulos 1994). Given the relatively low rates of participation
by women in formal-sector labor markets in such countries, informa-
tion on the potential contribution of women’s schooling to income
is less available and, where found, problematical to interpret because
of labor market selectivity. Advocates of development and poverty
reduction policies that emphasize investments in female schooling,
however, suggest that significant returns to women’s schooling are
to be found in the household sector, where the schooling of women
has important effects on the human capital of future generations
(World Bank 1991; United Nations Development Program 1996).
One argument of development strategists, in particular, is that
better-educated mothers are superior teachers in the home, so that
investments in women’s human capital complement those in schools
(e.g., Forum for African Women Educationalists 1995).
There are many estimates from low-income countries of a positive
relationship between maternal schooling and the human capital of
children that control for family characteristics such as income and
paternal schooling. However, an important alternative interpreta-
tion of this association, based on conceptions of households in which
individuals optimize and bargain, is that mothers with higher levels
of schooling have superior options outside the household that con-
fer to them a greater command of resources within the household,
which they choose to allocate to children at higher levels than men
would (Folbre 1984, 1986; Thomas 1990; Haddad, Hoddinott, and
Alderman 1997). While this view is not incompatible with the hy-
pothesis that schooling actually augments home skills for women, it
presupposes that women’s schooling has returns outside the house-
hold. More important, it implies that the expansion of options for
women in the labor market along with enhanced investments in
women’s schooling is necessary to achieve greater investments in
children. However, growth in female employment opportunities,
which may be difficult to effect via specific program interventions,
is not a necessary condition for achieving greater schooling invest-
ments if schooling enhances women’s productivity in the home pro-
duction of human capital and there are returns to schooling men.
1
1
Of course, the observed positive associations between the schooling of mothers
and that of their children admit to a number of other interpretations. More schooled

684 journal of political economy
In this paper we develop a model of household decision making
in order to assess empirically the contribution of maternal schooling
to investments in children’s schooling while taking into account the
roles of preferences for schooling in the home and in the marriage
market; the effects of schooling on home productivity, household
bargaining power, and the time costs of household activities; and
differential returns to schooling for men and women in the labor
market. The framework is applied to data describing the demand
for educated wives and household investments in schooling in rural
India before and during the ‘‘green revolution,’’ a time in which
the returns to men’s but not women’s schooling rose substantially
in the farming sector but the apparently limited role of women in
agricultural decision making or in rural formal-sector employment
activities remained unchanged.
The estimates indicate that the demand for schooled wives in-
creased more rapidly in the areas of high agricultural growth despite
the absence of market returns to female schooling. Consistent with
the interpretation of this as derived demand for female schooling
as an input in the production of child schooling, estimates that ex-
ploit the extended structure of Indian households to reduce the in-
fluence of male preferences for schooling and wealth effects indicate
significantly higher levels of study hours among children with liter-
ate mothers. Finally, estimates of the determinants of dowry values
indicate that, consistent with the view that female literacy has a value
to men rather than providing an improved postmarriage bargaining
position for women, literate women command a premium in the
marriage market. These results thus suggest that increasing labor
market opportunities for women is not necessary to justify increased
investments in female schooling, which have payoffs even in settings
in which there is increased demand for schooling solely in male-
dominated occupations.
II. The Setting: Women and the Indian
Green Revolution
The green revolution in India began in the mid to late 1960s with
the importation of new, high-yielding seeds developed outside of
India that substantially augmented agricultural productivity and eco-
nomic growth where soil and weather conditions within India were
women may contribute more income to the household, which may lead to increased
investments in child schooling even if all household incomes are pooled and school-
ing has no in-home productivity effects. Also, men with greater preferences for
schooling may marry women with higher levels of schooling and invest more heavily
in their children’s schooling.

Frequently asked questions

Q1. What have the authors contributed in "Women's schooling, home teaching, and economic growth" ?

Estimates are obtained that indicate that a component of the significant and positive relationship between maternal literacy and child schooling in the Indian setting reflects the productivity effect of home teaching and that the existence of this effect, combined with the increase in returns to schooling for men, importantly underlies the expansion of female literacy following the onset of the green revolution. 

Q2. Why does the variable pick up his bargaining power?

Because a father’s relationship to the head, given partible inheritance rules, affects his claim on household assets, the variable may pick up his bargaining power within the extended household. 

Q3. Why is the coefficient standard error corrected?

Because there are multiple subfamilies within a substantial portion of the households, coefficient standard errors are corrected for arbitrary within-household error correlations. 

Q4. What is the effect of the father’s literacy on the probability that the head completes primary?

The effect of the father’s literacy is one-third that of the mother, and the effect of his father’s having completed primary school on the probability that the head completes primary school is essentially zero.women’s schooling 711of the husband’s family when he was age 15 and the schooling of the husband’s parents. 

Q5. Why are there no significant effects of female schooling on earnings?

In particular, because of relatively low levels of female nonagricultural employment and evidently low levels of involvement of women in management decisions in agriculture over the sample period studied, the authors are able to rule out important effects of female schooling on earnings, particularly for women with less than primary schooling. 

Q6. What is the effect of the absence of labor market returns to schooling for women?

This absence of labor market returns to schooling for women, coupled with evidence of increased demand for literate women in high–technical change areas, a significant effect of maternal literacy on the study hours of children that is robust to variation in the schooling preferences of fathers, lower dowries received on average by men marrying literate women, and the absence of an effect of maternal schooling on child clothing expenditures, indicates that any bargaining effects, if present, also had a limited impact on household decision making. 

Q7. How many illiterate male farmers were married to a woman who had any schooling?

Examination of the time allocation of the mothers also reveals nonlinear relationships with respect to their schooling level that ap-7 Only 7.2 percent of all illiterate male farmers who are also fathers were married to a woman who had any schooling. 

Q8. How much time do literate mothers spend in home care?

The point estimates in columns 2 and 3 suggest that, within the same household, literate mothers with similarly aged young children devote almost 2 hours more to home care than illiterate mothers. 

Q9. How can the authors estimate the effect of technology on the schooling of brides?

By estimating (9), the authors can eliminate the influence of the fixed factor µ j and the pre–green revolution technology and still identify whether the effect of technological change on bride’s schooling is positive (βτ . 0), whatever the value of the technology level effect βθ, given positive autocorrelation in technology shocks, if γ67–71 . γ72–76. 

Q10. what is the average age of a child with a literate mother?

The OLS estimates indicate, again, that children with literate mothers spend, on average, one hour more per day in study than other children of the same age, sex, and prior schooling with mothers who are not literate.