A new school year is starting for students in some countries, but education isn’t a given for all children around the world – especially girls. Some 62 million girls between ages six and 15 are missing school, according to the World Bank.
In the face of such worrying statistics, global health and government leaders took action to keep girls learning in northeastern Pakistan’s Punjab state. In the mid-2000s, data showed that only about one-quarter of girls enrolled in middle school. Beyond that, poor girls’ educations were linked to increases in child marriage and teen pregnancy, as detailed in the book Millions Saved: New Cases of Success in Global Health. What’s more, wider research shows that childbearing in adolescence is a known health risk to both mother and child.
“No one disputes that the single best strategy to delay age of marriage is keeping girls in school,” says Lyric Thompson, senior policy manager at the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW). So the Punjabi government tried a new tactic to keep girls in the classroom and away from early marriages: paying their families.
Can money fix it?
In Punjab, leaders employed a tactic that’s part of a larger global health strategy: conditional cash transfers (CCTs). Typically provided by government or nonprofit groups, CCTs give money to vulnerable people in exchange for those people taking certain actions – such as sending children to school or regularly seeing a doctor. CCTs came into practice in places like Bangladesh in the 1980s. Many developing countries, including Malawi and Kenya, have started using them, and US metropolitan areas like New York City and Memphis have also tried the transfers.
As part of major education reforms in 2003, Pakistan introduced the Female School Stipend Program (FSSP). The program offers 600 rupees, equal to $10 (US dollars), per academic quarter for families of schoolgirls in grades 6 to 10 who lived in one of 15 target districts with low literacy rates. The girls had to attend classes at least 80% of the time to receive the stipend. By 2014, the FSSP covered 393,000 pupils.
A cost-effective global health program like this, says George Washington University’s Dr Sarah Baird, can use limited resources to drive two key benefits. First, better education means kids can seek better jobs when they leave school. Second, it improves the wider economy. “You decrease poverty now and decrease future poverty by encouraging households to invest in children,” says Baird, an associate professor of global health and economics. “It’s not just about keeping girls in school.”
Classroom attendance in Punjab wasn’t the only issue. If any program were to work, then it would need to factor in societal barriers. There are many reasons why girls might not have gone to classes: lack of safe hygiene facilities, domestic duties, fear of violence when traveling between home and school, and the cost of books and uniforms, to name a few. In many places where education is not free or compulsory, Thompson says, parents might invest spare money in schooling for their sons rather than daughters.
Baird notes that CCTs can chip away at school attendance problems, especially if barriers are multifaceted or too costly to fix directly. For instance, when building more schools isn’t possible, CCTs might offer motivation to attend far-away classes.
Proven results
To check the program’s impact, the World Bank’s Dr Nazmul Chaudhury and the state government monitored the results. Findings are positive so far, says Chaudhury, who previously helped set up CCTs in Bangladesh to benefit children in poverty.
Researchers estimate that FSSP increased girls’ enrollment in post-secondary school by between 11% and 32%, depending on the year and the class. Girls who went through the program married about 1.2 to 1.5 years later than girls who hadn’t, and they tended to have fewer children.
“We shared [results] with the government, and based on that, the government carried on with the program. It’s still running today,” Chaudhury says.
He notes that there’s more to find out. “We know about them going to school, but how long are they staying?” Chaudhury asks. “Do they have better job prospects?” This, like many global health programs, will take time to see.
This content is paid for by the Center for Global Development