The High Cost Of Not Educating Girls

This study is part of a series of notes at the World Bank on the potential cost of not educating girls globally. Despite substantial progress over the last two decades, girls still have on average lower levels of educational attainment than boys in many countries, especially at the secondary and tertiary levels. When it comes to actual learning, while girls tend to outperform boys in reading, they score lower in math and science tests in many countries. Together with occupational segregation and social norms that discourage women to take full advantage of labor market opportunities, this leads to large gaps in earnings between men and women.