The Costs of Missing the Millennium Development Goal on Gender Equity

At the Millennium Summit, the world community pledged to promote
gender equality and chose as a specific target the achievement of
gender equity in primary and secondary education by the year 2005
in every country of the world. Based on the findings from a growing
empirical literature that suggests that gender equity in education
promotes economic growth and reduce fertility, child mortality, and
undernutrition, we estimate what the costs in terms of growth, and
forgone fertility, mortality and undernutrition reduction, will be
for the 45 countries that are, on current projections, unlikely to
meet the target. Our estimates suggest that, by 2005, the countries
that are off track are likely to suffer 0.1-0.3 percentage points
lower per capita growth rates as a result and will have 0.1-0.4
more children per woman, and, by 2015, an average of 14 per 1000
higher rates of under five mortality and 2.4 percentage points
higher prevalence of underweight children under five. Sensitivity
analyses suggest that the results are quite robust to using
different specifications and approaches to estimating these losses.