Determinants Of Female Education In Rural Areas Of Pakistan: A Household Analysis
Author: Zeeshan Rasheed

The right to acquire education is one of the fundamental human rights. The education plays crucial role for the development of women. Low literacy rate among rural women is a challenge for each developing country. The promotion of women education is a dominant strategy for development therefore, the influences of women schooling are chiefly central for policy-makers. The socio-economic factors play significant role in determining the female education and these factors are the driving forces of a country’s economic development. The objective of this study is to investigate the socio-economic factors that affect girls’ school enrollment as well as their level of education at household level in Pakistan. The sample for this study consists of 2142 girls of 5-18 years obtained from Pakistan Rural Household Panel Survey 2014 conducted by International Food Policy Research institute. In order to determine the girls’ school enrollment status and level of education, logit model for binary outcome and Generalized Poisson model for count outcome are employed respectively. The estimates of the logistic regression illustrate that the household economic status measured by household expenditures, household assets, and household savings have positive and significant role in determining the girls’ school enrollment while poverty affects girls’ enrollment status negatively and significantly. The estimates also show that parents prefer boys’ education over the girls’ education and teacher gender matters for them hence both negatively affect the girls’ school enrollment. The number of children aged 0-4 years, number of male and female siblings aged 5-15 years influence the girls school enrollment negatively whereas male and female sibling aged 15 years above influence the girls school enrollment positively. The father education, girls’ age and beneficiary households of social safety net are found significant factors that affect the girls’ school enrollment status positively. On the other hand, estimates of Generalized Poisson Model demonstrate that household income, household assets, father education, household head employment, travel sources for school, poverty, farm work status and domestic work have positive and significant effects on the girls’ level of education. The household savings, household debt, travel time required to reach at school, household expenditures, type of school, repetition of last class and family size influence girls level of education negatively. Finally, the study recommends that Government should take into account the measures to improve household’s economic status and parents biased behavior towards girl’s education. It is also recommended that Government needs to improve and ensure the performance of public schools, social safety net programs and employment opportunities. Supervisor:- Dr. Saud Ahmed Khan

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Supervisor: Saud Ahmed Khan

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