Poiic\ Risiaicu Woixixc Paiii 5753

Measuring the Economic Gain of Investing

in Girls
Te Girl Enect Dividend
Jad Chaaban
Wendy Cunningham
Te World Bank
Human Development Network
Children and Youth Unit
&
Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network
Gender Unit
August 2011
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Produced by the Research Support Team
Abstract
e Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the ndings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development
issues. An objective of the series is to get the ndings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. e papers carry the
names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. e ndings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those
of the authors. ey do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and
its aliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.
Poiic\ Risiaicu Woixixc Paiii 5753
Although girls are approximately half the youth
population in developing countries, they contribute
less than their potential to the economy. Te objective
of this paper is to quantify the opportunity cost of
girls exclusion from productive employment with
the hope that stark ngures will lead policymakers to
reconsider the current underinvestment in girls. Te
paper explores the linkages between investing in girls
and potential increases in national income by examining
three widely prevalent aspects of adolescent girls lives:
early school dropout, teenage pregnancy and joblessness.
Te countries included in the analysis are: Bangladesh,
Brazil, Burundi, China, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Malawi,
Nigeria, Paraguay, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania,
and Uganda. Te authors use secondary data to allow
for some comparability across countries. Tey nnd
Tis paper is a joint product of the Children and Youth Unit, Human Development Network; and the Gender Unit, Poverty
Reduction and Economic Management Network. It is part of a larger enort by the World Bank to provide open access to
its research and make a contribution to development policy discussions around the world. Policy Research Working Papers
are also posted on the Web at http://econ.worldbank.org. Te author may be contacted at Wcunningham@worldbank.org.
that investing in girls so that they would complete the
next level of education would lead to lifetime earnings
of todays cohort of girls that is equivalent to up to
68 percent of annual gross domestic product. When
adjusting for ability bias and labor demand elasticities,
this ngure falls to 54 percent, or 1.5 percent per year.
Closing the inactivity rate between girls and boys would
increase gross domestic product by up to 5.4 percent,
but when accounting for students, male-female wage
gaps and labor demand elasticities, the joblessness gap
between girls and their male counterparts yields an
increase in gross domestic product of up to 1.2 percent in
a single year. Te cost of adolescent pregnancy as a share
of gross domestic could be as high as 30 percent or as
low as 1 percent over a girls lifetime, depending on the
assumptions used to calculate the losses.
Measuring the Economic Gain of Investing in
Girls: The Girl Effect Dividend
1


Jad Chaaban
2

Wendy Cunningham
3





















JEL Classification: I0, J16, O4
Key Words: Gender, Economic Growth, Health and Education


1
We would like to thank Nithya Gopu, Ilana Finley, Lynn Renken, Sir Michael Marmot, Ruth Levine
Miriam Temin, Shubha Chakravarty, Nistha Sinha, Maroula Haddad, and Francesca Montini for their
comments and suggestions. All views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the
opinions of their institutions.
2
American University of Beirut.
3
The World Bank.
2
1. I ntroduction
Improving the socio-economic outcomes for girls and young women is of central
importance, not only to the beneficiaries themselves, but also to their communities and
the next generation. Many of the 600 million girls who live in the developing world do
not have the opportunity to become fully functioning members of society. Approximately
one-quarter of girls in developing countries are not in school (Lloyd 2005)

and one-
quarter to one-half of girls in developing counties become mothers before age 18 (United
Nations Population Fund 2005).
Although girls are half the youth population (aged 15-24) of the developing
world, little attention has been given to the specific challenges facing adolescent girls as
they develop into adult members of families, the workforce, and society. General
statistics and sector-specific studies point to the merits of investing in girls, including
lower infant mortality, healthier families (Bicego and Boerma 1993), and greater labor
market earnings, but policy often does not explicitly target development opportunities for
adolescent girls. This may be due to insufficient understanding of the actual social
benefits of investing in adolescent girls.
Most work that considers girls` contribution to economic development or poverty
reduction Iocuses on investments in girls` education and health (see Ior instance Levine
et al. 2008, Lloyd and Young 2009, Temin and Levine 2009). Returns to girls` education
in developing countries are substantial, and in most cases they exceed those observed in
developed countries and those of boys. A cross country study on the effect of education
on average wages (a proxy for productivity) estimates that primary education increases
girls` earnings by 5 to 15 percent over their lifetimes, while boys experience a rate of
return between 4 and 8 percent (Psacharopoulos and Patrinos 2002).
4
And, for example,
returns to female secondary education are 15 to 25 percent higher for women than men in
Thailand, Ghana and Cote d`Ivoire (Schultz 2002).
More than 14 million girls ages 15-19 give birth every year (United Nations
Population Fund 2005), which puts them at risk. While there is an overall trend of
decreasing birth rates for girls, maternal causes kill more 15- to 19-year old girls than any

4
This is partly due to greater entry to formal labor markets by educated girls, where earnings exceed
informal or home-based work (Malhotra, Grown, and Pande 2003).
3
other cause (Patton, et al. 2009). The majority of these adolescent pregnancies take place
within the context of early marriage (UNICEF 2001). Delaying pregnancies to a more
healthy age is not only desirable from a general reproductive health perspective, but it
may also lead to more economic and social empowerment of young women who can
continue their education or secure a more lucrative job. To the best of our knowledge,
there has not been systematic research to measure the opportunity cost of teenage
motherhood to economic growth.
Recent work has begun to quantify the potential that human development
investments in girls have on GDP growth rates. Hanushek and Woessmann (2007), using
cross-sectional regressions for 50 countries, estimate that each additional year of
schooling boosts long-run growth by 0.58 percentage points per year. A World Bank
study in 1999 demonstrates through data simulation for a selection of 100 countries, that
increasing the secondary education of girls by 1% results in annual income increase of
0.3% per capita. Such an increase is substantial for many developing countries. The study
concludes that 'societies that have a preIerence for not investing in girls pay a price for it
in terms oI slower growth and reduced income (Dollar and Gatti 1999).
Recent empirical work conducted by the World Bank on Latin American and
Caribbean countries has broadened this work to consider the importance of a range of
youth behaviors on GDP growth. These studies use non-parametric methodologies to
quantify the individual and social costs related to risky youth behavior, which includes
among others unemployment, early school leaving and adolescent pregnancy
(Cunningham et al. 2008, World Bank 2003, 2007). Evidence from Latin America
estimates the social cost due to these youth problems equal to 2 percent of GDP annually
(Cunningham et al. 2008).
In this paper, we aim to expand the above findings on the linkages between
investing in girls and potential increases in national income by broadening the scope of
the analysis to include several aspects oI adolescent girls` lives in countries across the
world. These include early school dropout, teenage pregnancy, and joblessness, defined
as the ratio of the number of girls between the age of 15 and 24 who are not in school or
in the labor force as a share of the female working age population aged 15-24. Although
these issues have been extensively discussed by social development specialists (Levine et
4
al. 2009), there has been no evaluation to date of the economic costs imposed on societies
by the extensive incidence of these negative factors. Such an exercise is important in
demonstrating the potential magnitude of economic gains to nations as a result of
investing in adolescent girls and ensuring they are on a path to achieve their maximum
human potential.
This paper focuses on girls rather than women or boys. Adolescence is the
critical period when girls are at a greater risk of many events with irreversible negative
consequences such as child marriage, early pregnancy, or school leaving that not only
impact girls themselves but also the next generation. Girls face specific adversities that
make them even more vulnerable than women or than boys. For example household and
community-wide perceptions that girls have limited economic value, compared to boys,
can result in reduced family desire to keep their daughters in school. Given this, the
recommendations presented in this paper highlight actions that countries can take to reap
the benefit of investing in their girls.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2 presents the conceptual
framework and empirical methodology of the paper; Sections 3 through 5 report the cost
estimate results for a selection of developing countries and Section 6 concludes.

2. Conceptual f ramewor k and empi rical methodology
This paper builds on the methodology developed in World Bank (2003) to
generate the economic costs oI girls` and young women`s exclusion in terms oI early
school dropout, joblessness, and pregnancy.
5
The cost estimates measure the
consequences of the depletion of human capital, as young girls who do not develop their
potential, or whose human capital is constrained, necessarily limit their productive
contribution to the economy. The empirical exercise seeks to quantify the opportunity
costs related to this lost productivity. We do not include the losses associated with other
aspects of growth such as fewer sick days (Grossman and Kaestner 1997) of more
educated workers or lower violence rates among children of adult (rather than teen)

5
The definition of youth depends on the sectoral and cultural context under study; for the purposes of this
study youth female or girls, as per the United Nations definition, refer to females in the age bracket of 15 to
24. All cost data refer to girls in this age range with the exception of adolescent pregnancy, which refers to
girls ages 15 to 19.
5
mothers (Donohue and Levitt 2001). Also, we do not include the many non-economic
factors associated with underinvestment in girls, such as emotional distress from a young
girls` violent death, lower health status due to low educational attainment, or losses of
cultural assets due to early childbearing-related deaths, due to difficulty in quantifying
these costs.
We only estimate the opportunity (economic) cost and do not consider financial
costs. The opportunity cost is a measure oI 'what could have been iI only the additional
investment had been made in girls. The financial costs of under-investing in girls`
development such as greater health expenditures for teen mothers or payment of higher
social benefits to women who did not complete school are not included since these
resources exist in the economy and would be redistributed to other uses if not spent on
adolescent girls. We do not estimate the value of the alternative use of these resources
for two reasons. First, the modeling requirements are quite difficult and the necessary
data are scarce.
6
Second, these factors are difficult to quantify in a cross-country setup,
as countries differ greatly in their economic and institutional structures. The estimates in
this paper take into account the primary impacts oI girls` restricted human development
and do not incorporate the secondary and intergenerational impacts.
Countries selected for analysis in this paper represent a sample composed on the basis
of three considerations. First, they must be developing countries for which sufficient data
exist to enable the calculations and estimates to be performed within the timeframe of
publishing this study. Second, they must have indicators implying significant
vulnerabilities for adolescent girls or validating existing conditions exacerbating
adolescent girls` social exclusion (e.g., low school enrollment rates, high rates of early
marriage, high prevalence of HIV, gender based violence, or a population distribution
skewed toward males thereby suggesting a lower value for girl-children in that society).
Third, they must be known to have programs and interventions that are designed to reach
vulnerable adolescent girls at risk of early school dropout or adolescent pregnancy and
offer them a means of increasing their economic empowerment. Or, they are countries
where the institutions are such that these programs would be feasible. We over-sample

6
For example, Assuno and Carvalho (2005) estimate the financial costs to under-investment in youth in
Brazil. Even in a middle-income country with relatively good data collection, the authors were unable to
capture the majority of the financial costs necessary to estimate a meaningful value.
6
African countries, including all those that the data will permit, but we also attempt to
include a few countries from other parts of the developing world. The resulting countries
for analysis are: Bangladesh, Brazil, Burundi, China, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Malawi,
Nigeria, Paraguay, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda.
7
We also carry out the
estimates for the United States, United Kingdom, Norway, and Sweden to allow for
developed country comparisons.
To allow for cross-country comparisons in the estimates, we use secondary data from
sources that use a common methodology to generate their numbers based on each
country`s primary data. The country-specific data essential for the cost estimation is
drawn from official sources including the International Labor Organization`s (ILO) Key
Indicators of the Labor Market (KILM); the World Bank statistics from the World
Development Indicators (WDI), HNPStats and EDStats; and the World Health
Organization`s Global Health Observatory database. In some cases, we used statistics that
were generated differently by country; these are indicated in the methodology discussion
below.

a. Methodology for computing the cost of leaving school early
Measuring the loss in potential earnings due to lower educational attainment is
done in two steps, in a methodology similar to World Bank (2003) and Chaaban (2007).
First, an age earnings profile is created by gender and education level. To calculate the
wage for each cell, we adjust the mean national wage for a given country using
coefficient estimates from latest national Mincer regressions to evaluate the variation of
wages according to education, age and gender.
Second, we sum the total lifetime earnings of having a certain level of educational
attainment and subtract from it the total lifetime earnings of having a lower level of
education. This gives us the net gain that a country would theoretically enjoy if that girl
finished the next level of education. This is done for all children and also disaggregated
for males and females.
The equation used to generate the foregone earnings of having a higher degree is
the following:

7
Due to data limitations, we are not able to include all these countries in every estimation.
7

where E
i
s
is the total lifetime earnings differential for an individual i with education level
s who dropped out before achieving a higher educational level s` s+1 for s=0, 1, 2
where s=0 corresponds to incomplete primary school, s=1 corresponds to primary school
completed only, s=2 corresponds to secondary school completed only, and s`3
corresponds to tertiary education; e are the annual earnings at time t of an individual with
s (or s) educational level, t is the age at which this individual begins work and T is the
age at which this individual will retire; and r is the discount rate. For simplicity, we
assume that T-t for those with a level of education s is equivalent to T-t for those with s
level of education. Finally, to calculate the total lifetime loss in earnings for all girls who
were not in school in the observation year, we multiply E
i
s
by the number of students in
the population who did not go on to continue their education (E
s
). We repeat this exercise
for each s and sum together to generate the total foregone earnings of the most recent
cohort of school leavers (E):

As in Cunningham et al. (2008), we use 45 years as the length of the working life, and a 6
percent discount rate.
Assuming that if girls had just completed the next level of education, they would
earn the same average wage as those who actually did complete that level of education
would over-estimate the productivity gains to education since part of that gap is likely
due to a difference in abilities that cannot be attributed to differential education levels.
8

To account for ability bias, we introduce an adjustment to average wages. We use two
adjustment factors. First, based on Card (1999), we assume that girls with only s level of
education, if they completed s+1 years of education, they would earn wages that are 10%

8
Numerous studies have shown that those who complete s level oI education are less 'able than those who
complete s+1 level of education due to genetic or social factors that are unobservable to the researcher, but
observed and acted upon by the girl, her parents, the school, or others (Card 1999). Thus, we cannot
assume that if a girl only had completed one additional level of education, she would be earning the
average wage equivalent to the observed wages of girls who actually did complete that level of education.
Instead, we need to account for ability bias when assigning average wages of girls with s+1 level of
education to girls with only s level of education.
8
less than the average wage for s+1 graduates at each age throughout their work lives. In
other words, when calculating the difference between wages of girls with s level of
education and those with s+1 level of education, we adjust downward by 10% the s+1
wages. Second, based on scarcer research from developing countries, we assume that the
less educated girls, when gaining an additional level of education, would earn 20% less
than the currently observed average wage for girls with s+1 level of education.
We make yet another adjustment to account for the possibility that the influx of
more educated girls into the labor force will reduce the equilibrium wage for that skills-
segment of the labor market. Following on Behar (2004), we use labor demand
elasticities of -0.56 to -0.8 for sub-Saharan Africa. Thus, for each 1% increase in the
share of the labor force with a higher level of education, we decrease the average wage
by 0.56% and 0.8%. For countries in Asia, we draw on Goldar (2008) and apply an
elasticity of -0.4. In Latin America and the Caribbean the elasticity is -0.2, as in
Fajnzylber and Maloney (2005).
The data come from various sources. The returns to education that are estimated
in Mincer equations are drawn from country studies. The average wage is taken from the
ILO`s KILM database. The number of girls dropping out of each grade level is from the
World Bank`s EDStats.
To allow for some degree of comparison across countries, we state the final cost
as a share oI the country`s most recent GDP. This also allows us to generate all
calculations in local currency but still have comparability ex-post. It adjusts for the size
of the economy and, to some degree population, allowing for a better sense of the
magnitude oI the gain in the context oI the country`s output. Finally, it better
communicates the implications for economic growth than a raw currency amount would.
The value oI annual GDP is taken Irom the World Bank`s WDI.

b. Methodology for computing the cost of inactivity and joblessness
Following Cunningham and Garca-Verd (forthcoming) and Chaaban (2007), the
estimate captures the opportunity cost oI girls` inactivity and joblessness in regard to lost
wages and productivity. The 'inactivity rate is the share oI girls age 15-24 who are not
working; this includes girls who are both in school and out of school. We consider two
9
target scenarios: girls have the same inactivity rate as adult women (Target 1) and girls
have the same inactivity rate as boys (Target 2).The following equation is used to
calculate the cost as foregone output to the economy:

where IR
y
is young girls` inactivity rate; IR
*
is the target inactivity rate; WAP
y
is the
working age population of young females; and w
y
is real annual female youth wage. The
opportunity cost scenario is where girls` inactivity rates are the same as that of a
counterfactual group, where IR* is the counterfactual rate. Thus, (IR
y
IR*)xWAP
y

gives us the number oI additional girls who would be working iI girls` inactivity rates
were the same as IR*. Since most girls are not searching for jobs, we assume that the lost
productivity per year is equivalent to the annual wage oI all those girls who 'could be
working. Cost is then divided by total GDP in order to obtain an estimate of the cost of
youth inactivity for males and females as a share of GDP.
Data for the number of female youth labor force participants is drawn from the
ILO`s KILM database, which projects employment data based on country-specific
models. GDP is drawn in current US dollars from the WDI database (World Bank). As
there are no cross-country comparable wage data for youth, the methodology relies on
using the GDP per labor force participant (PPP adjusted). The computation assumes that
the share of wage earnings is 60% of GDP.
9
Since females earn less than males and this
ratio differs widely across countries, we introduce three adjustment factors to simulate
the gender wage gap: 25%, 50%, and 75% of average wages (based on Saba Arbache,
Kolev, and Filipiak, 2010). Further, since youth earn less than adults, we introduce three
adjustment factors to the average wage to account for the age wage gap: 50%, 70%, and
90% of average earnings.
10

The ILO`s KILM 'inactivity rates that we use in the above estimates include
students, which would lead to an over-estimate of the joblessness issue. A more
appropriate estimate would be to generate the foregone output only of those girls who are

9
These assumptions are based on cross-country estimates elaborated in Cunningham, and Garca-Verd,
(forthcoming).
10
The 70% adjustment factor is based on a comparison of mean youth and adult wages in several Latin
American countries (Cunningham et al., 2008).
10
not working or studying; i.e. the 'jobless. We can deIine the 'jobless rate as the share
of girls age 15-24 who are unemployed, not working in labor market activities, and not in
school. Thus, the difference between the inactivity rate and the jobless rate is that the
former includes students while the latter excludes students.
UnIortunately, no data source provides 'joblessness rates so we estimate them
for the purposes of this paper. To purge students from the ILO`s KILM inactivity rate,
we use EDStats secondary school attendance rates to roughly estimate the percentage of
girls 15-24 who are in school.
11
We generate two joblessness rates, under different
assumptions. First, we assume that girls age 15 and older are only in upper secondary.
We use gross upper secondary school enrollment rates to calculate the number of girls
aged 15-24 who are in secondary school and divide by the number by the female
population age 15-24. We call this the 'lower bound because it does not account for
girls over age 15 who are delayed in school (i.e., in primary or lower secondary).
Second, we assume that all girls in upper secondary are 15 and older and that half of the
girls in lower secondary are over age 15. We divide this number by the female
population, age 15-24 to estimate an 'upper bound since we are likely to be
overestimating the number of girls in lower secondary who are over-age. We then
subtract the lower bound and the upper bound from the KILM activity rate to get two
measures Ior girls` joblessness rates.
12

We present the opportunity cost both oI girls` inactivity and oI girls` joblessness
relative to women`s and boys` inactivity and joblessness. We use the more precisely
measured but less conceptually correct inactivity rate as our base case. Then we present
and compare the costs when using the less precisely measured but more conceptually
correct jobless rates.

As in our calculations for early school leaving, we adjust for labor demand
elasticities, assuming that an increase in the number of workers will decrease market
wages. In this case, we apply the same elasticities described in the last section.

11
The age range 15-24 was chosen due to data availability. Ideally, girls aged 15 should be still pursuing
their studies and not working.
12
It should be noted that females might engage in valuable home-based production activities, and this is not
corrected by the ILO`s inactivity rates.
11
It should be noted that the costs only refer to economic opportunity costs related
to loss of productivity, and do not capture costs related to emotional distress, risky health
behavior and other factors that come with being jobless. These costs are an annual cost,
rather than a lifetime cost, as estimated for early school leaving and adolescent
pregnancy.

c. Methodology for computing the costs of adolescent pregnancy
Adolescent pregnancy may affect future earnings through various channels.
Maynard (1996) argues that adolescent pregnancy in the United States reduces young
mothers` Iuture productivity and earnings through higher school dropouts (among other
factors). More recent work on US women`s earnings by Anderson, Binder, and Krause
(2003) identifies a 'motherhood tax that results Irom less job experience of mothers due
to time out of work to attend to childbearing and childrearing responsibilities. Neither of
these factors is likely to be as important in developing countries as in the US partly due to
early school leaving (unrelated to pregnancy) in many low-skilled countries, fewer safety
nets that allow for women to not work for a period, and less structured labor markets (i.e.
self-employment) that do not require consistency in job attendance, but they may have
some impact. Following World Bank (2003) and Chaaban (2007), we compute the costs
linked to adolescent pregnancies as measured through forgone lifetime earnings due to
early pregnancies.
We estimate the opportunity cost of adolescent pregnancy using two
methodologies, each subscribing to specific transmission mechanisms. First, based on
the observation that teen mothers have lower levels of education than girls who delay
pregnancy (McCauley and Salter 1995), we compute the opportunity cost by measuring
the adolescent mother`s Ioregone annual income due to fewer years of schooling. We
assume that if girls had postponed their first birth, they would earn a greater wage at
every age throughout their working lives than those girls who did not postpone.
We assume a constant wage gap over their working lives between young mothers
and girls who postponed their childbearing. Implicitly, we assume that the slope of the
age-earnings profile is the same across groups but the intercept differs by the wage
12
premium gained by greater levels of education of girls who postponed childbirth.
13
Since
wages are not reported separately for adolescent mothers and non-mothers, we use the
average adult female expected wage as an earnings proxy for a girl who postponed
childbirth and the average female youth expected wage as an earnings proxy for
adolescent mothers. Then the difference between average female wage and the average
teenage mother wage is a proxy Ior the 'cost oI early childbearing to liIetime economic
productivity:
14

where I is forgone annual earnings; w
F
is mean annual adult female wage; Emp
F
is adult
female employment rate; w
Yf
is mean annual youth female wage and Emp
Yf
is youth
female employment rate.
The above costs correspond to the average costs of early pregnancy for one girl in
one year. To measure the total cohort cost per year, we multiply the average cost with the
number of adolescent births in the observation year (Yf). Assuming these girls will stop
working when they are age 60 and these young mothers are age 15the International
Labor Organization`s standard age Ior the beginning oI a work liIewhen they enter the
labor market, we multiply the annual cost of the cohort by the years that the cohort will
be working, which is 45 (retirement age minus age of first working). Finally, as above,
we state the total country costs as a share of current year GDP.
Several sources of data are used. The wage data are those that were derived for
the estimates oI early school leaving, reported in section a, above. The World Bank`s
HNPStats was used for incidence of adolescent childbirth, and the World Bank`s WDI
database was used for GDP values.
While the observed wage gap between teen mothers and other girls persists
throughout life, this may be more a factor of differences in innate ability rather than a

13
Ideally, we would have replicated the age earnings proIiles discussed above in the 'education section
and applied the methodology to this section. Unfortunately, our data only allow us to measure earnings by
grade level. Since adolescent mothers and non-mothers often differ in education level by only a few years,
'grade level is not suIIiciently disaggregated to identify wage differences across groups. Our thanks to
one of our referees for the recommendation to explore this methodological approach.
14
We could control for the labor market dynamic for females, however this varies substantially across
countries and would make cross-country comparisons difficult to interpret. Instead, we choose to use a
constant change factor and provide comparative statics across countries.
13
result of early childbearing. To account for this, we use Anderson, et. al. (2003) to adjust
for a 'motherhood tax, which reduces lifetime wages by 5% (for those with one child)
and 10% (for those with two children). This is done primarily for discussion purposes as
it draws upon research done in the United States and thus has conclusions that would not
apply in a developing country.
Again, it should be noted that these costs are underestimates of the true social
costs of adolescent pregnancy since they only measure the losses attributed to lower
productivity due to truncated human capital accumulation. The many other implications
of early motherhood are summarized in various sources (World Bank 2007, Cunningham
et. al. 2008b).

3. Out of school : The cost of cutting her education short
Among the developing countries in our study, India and China have the lowest
dropout rates in both primary and secondary levels, with only 1% of girls not completing
primary school and 6% and 25%, respectively, not completing secondary school (Figure
1). Tanzania and Senegal tell a different story, though, with less than 60% of girls
completing primary education. Low secondary completion rates are also observed in the
African countries in the sample, with less than 20% of girls in the age range of 15 to 24
completing their secondary education in Burundi, Ethiopia, Senegal, and Uganda, for
example. Secondary dropout rates are higher than primary dropout rates in all countries.
School dropout rates for girls are higher than those for boys in most developing countries,
partly due to reasons outside the girl`s control, such as early marriage or cultural norms
that prioritize investments in boys (Levine et al. 2009).
The lifetime 'costs oI Iemale school dropouts, that can be attributed to lost
productive capacity due to under-investment in girls` education, range from nearly 70%
of annual GDP in Burundi to a barely noticeable 0.5% of annual GDP in India and China,
figures that are comparable to the developed countries in our sample. The last set of bars
in Figure 2 shows the costs to Burundi. If primary school dropouts equal to 27 percent
of girls had just completed primary school before going to work, they would have
generated lifetime income equivalent to nearly 25 oI Burundi`s annual GDP. And iI the
88 percent of girls who were not able to complete secondary school had just been able to
14
do so, their additional liIetime productivity would increase Burundi`s GDP by an amount
more than 2/3 of their annual GDP. Thus, if each Burundian girl completed the next level
of education, the total contribution to productivity over her lifetime could be equivalent
to nearly one year oI Burundi`s GDP, or GDP growth rates would be 2 percentage points
higher per year over the next 45 years the working liIetime oI today`s girls.
Other African countries in the sample also show significant opportunity cost due
to girls` school dropout. II girls in Kenya, Tanzania, Senegal and Uganda had completed
primary school alone, their additional output over their lifetimes would be equivalent to
20%, 18%, 14%, and 13% of annual GDP, respectively. And if their more educated
sisters completed secondary school, they would contribute 48%, 32%, 24%, and 34% (of
annual GDP) more to their economies over their lifetimes, equivalent to an increase in
annual GDP growth rates by approximately 0.5% to 1% annually for the next 45 years
(Figure 2).
When accounting for ability bias and depressed wages due to an influx of more
highly educated workers, we find that in countries where the cost is large in the original
calculations, it generally remains large in adjusted calculations. For example, in Burundi,
applying a 10% ability bias results in a lifetime cost of secondary school dropout that is
equivalent to 61% of annual GDP, as compared to 66% when we do not account for
ability bias. In Kenya, applying the most upper-bound measures (a 20% ability bias and
an -0.8 labor demand elasticity) shifts the cost of secondary school dropout from 48% to
31%.
It is worth noting that all but one of the permutations with a 20% ability bias
resulted in a negative cost for primary school leaving. This is because in all countries in
the study except Kenya, the return on primary education versus no education is less than
20%.
15

The opportunity cost of dropouts does not strictly map to the share of girls who
drop out of school. For example, while more than 85% of secondary school-aged girls
are not in school in Uganda and Burundi (Figure 1), the implications for Burundi (68% of
GDP) are far higher than those of Uganda (34%) (Figure 2). This differential is due to a
larger economy in Uganda and thus a lower share oI girls` productivity in total GDP

15
The sensitivity analysis results are available upon request, from the authors.
15
values. So while the total income that Uganda foregoes due to school dropout is four
times that of Burundi, the losses measured as a share of GDP are lower in the richer
Uganda case than in Burundi. Or, while 40% of primary school-aged girls in Senegal do
not complete their first level of schooling, as compared to 41% in Tanzania, the costs to
primary school dropouts are higher in Tanzania (18%) than in Senegal (14%). Again,
this is due to the lower wage share of girls in the Senegalese economy relative to the
Tanzanian economy.
Among the Asian countries in the education sample (India and China), the cost to
the economy of early school dropouts is negligible, at far less than 1 percent. This is
particularly striking in China, where 25% of girls do not complete secondary school
(Figure 1) but the costs to the economy are barely a blip in Figure 2. This is clearly due
to the low share oI girl`s wages relative to the enormous economies in both these
countries. Unsurprisingly, these findings hold up when we adjust for ability bias and
labor demand elasticity. We should not interpret this finding as an argument against
investing in girls, though. If we consider the monetary lifetime value of the opportunity
cost of secondary school dropout in each country US$32 billion (PPP adjusted) for
China and US$10 billion (PPP adjusted) in India we see that the costs are quite
substantial (Table 1). Supporting these girls may not contribute large amounts to overall
GDP, but it will play a significant role in poverty reduction and in secondary effects,
which we do not measure in this paper.
Finally, in the nine countries under study, dropping out of secondary school
causes higher costs to the economy than dropping out of primary school. This is driven
by two effects. First, the share of affected girls is much higher among secondary than
primary school-aged populations. Second, the returns to secondary education are much
higher than the returns to primary school.
It is important to note that these estimates are an underestimate of the total losses
due to early school leaving.
16
While wages capture job productivity, they do not account
for other costs of early school leaving such as higher unemployment, inferior health
status, and greater involvement in criminal activity.

16
We believe that any overestimations have been addressed through the adjustments for ability bias and
labor-skills demand elasticities. Table 1 presents the sensitivity analysis.
16

4. Out of wor k: The cost of excluding her f rom the job mar ket
Up to 85% of girls in our sample countries are inactive (Figure 3). In India,
Nigeria and South Africa, more than three quarters of all girls 15-24 are not engaged in
paid work and are not looking for work.
17
This compares to 61% in Paraguay, 57% in
Brazil and 50% in Bangladesh. At the other end of the spectrum, only a quarter of
Ethiopian girls report that they are inactive.
Girls and women have similar inactivity rates in some countries, but very
different rates in others. Girls and women in Ethiopia are close to equally inactive, with
the difference being 7 percentage points (Figure 4). Nigeria and South Africa are at the
opposite extreme: 51% of Nigerian women identify themselves as inactive as compared
to 83 percent of girls while 85% of South African girls are inactive compared to 57% of
women.
In all developing countries girls have higher inactivity rates than boys (Figure 5).
The gap ranges from 36 percentage points in India and 29 in Paraguay to only 5
percentage points in Ethiopia. Regional patterns of gender disparities do not emerge:
while India shows the largest disparity, this is followed by Paraguay and then Nigeria.
II young women`s inactivity rates were equal to those of adult women, annual
GDP growth rates would be up to 5.4 percentage points higher (Figure 6). The highest
gains are in Nigeria, where the gap between young and adult women`s inactivity rates is
32%, the largest disparity of the countries in our sample. This compares to a loss of 3.9%
of annual GDP in South Africa. So while the gap in inactivity rates is only 3 percentage
points more in Nigeria than that in South Africa, the actual youth female population in
Nigeria is much higher while GDP is lower than in South Africa. The result is a very
different impact between these two countries when the cost is presented as a share of
annual GDP.
At the other end of the spectrum, the foregone GDP is relatively low in Ethiopia
(Figure 6). This is also the country in our sample with the smallest gap in inactivity rates

17
These figures are not adjusted for school-going girls. These adjustments are used, and reported, in the
estimates of the costs of early school leaving. However, to better understand the summary statistics, it
worth noting that approximately 20% of girls age 15-24 are still in school in India and South Africa while
only 7% of Nigerian girls who are not working are studying.
17
between young and adult women (Figure 4). Although the magnitude of the loss is small
in terms of GDP growth rates, it is large in terms of foregone earnings. The PPP adjusted
annual income loss is equivalent to US$646 million in Ethiopia (Table 2).
If young women had inactivity rates similar to those of young men, annual GDP
growth rates would be up to 4.4% higher (Figure 7). Annual GDP growth rates in India,
Nigeria, and Paraguay would be 4.4, 3.5, and 3.3 percent higher if girls were as
economically active as boys (Figure 7). This is equivalent to almost US$165 billion (PPP
adjusted) in India, for example (Table 2). In South Africa, where the gender differential
in inactivity rates is small, the gains to greater economic activity of girls is much smaller,
though it still exceeds US$3.7 billion.
The gender gap does not always incur higher opportunity cost than the age gap.
In Bangladesh, Brazil, India, and Paraguay, the gains are much larger iI girls` inactivity
rates were more similar to those of boys than of adult women since the gap in inactivity
rates is larger between the sexes (within age) than the within-sex between-age gaps.
While in the African countries in the sample, if girls had the same (lower) inactivity rates
as adult women, the economies would enjoy larger gains than if the goal were to reduce
girls` inactivity rates to those of boys.
Accounting for the value of housework does not significantly change these
estimates for those countries in which data are available. Data from Brazil and India
allow us to adjust the opportunity cost of inactivity estimates to account for the
productive value that home-based work generates. Such adjustments to the cost of
inactivity include a proxy for the value of home-based production activities for young
women. However, this decrease in the cost of inactivity is not considerable. For example,
accounting for home-based production decreases the cost of inactivity of Brazil by 14% -
thus reducing the losses relative to women`s employment Irom 1.2 to 1.0 oI annual
GDP - and that of India by 19% (a reduction of the annual GDP figure from 1.6% to
1.3%).
Turning to 'joblessness rates, where we drop students from the inactivity rate,
the cost of female youth joblessness relative to that of adult women falls to zero or is
negative for most of our sample (Figure 6). In every country, adjusting the girls`
inactivity rate for the lower-bound school attendance estimate results in joblessness rates
18
among girls that are lower than those of women and, except in except Ethiopia,
Indonesia, Nigeria and Rwanda generate a negative 'cost. Adjusting by the 'upper
bound creates an even larger negative gap, such that the costs are only positive in
Nigeria and Rwanda. In other words, girls are less 'jobless than adult women once we
account for school-going girls. Further, when we adjust for wages, where we assume that
youth earn 50% of the adult wage, we find that the costs across all developing countries
are close to half of those reported in our primary calculations.
18

For target 2, we find that adjusting inactivity rates for the lower bound for boys
and girls, reduces the cost as a share of annual GDP by 0.5 percentage points in Brazil,
while it raises it by 0.5 percentage points in Nigeria (Figure 7). At the upper bound, it
ranges from -0.6 percentage points in Brazil to 0.7 in Nigeria and Turkey. This accounts
Ior girls` higher secondary school educational attendance than boys in Brazil thus
reducing the gap in the inactivity rate compared to boys` higher secondary school
attendance in Nigeria, where more boys are dropped from the inactivity rate than girls
are, thus generating a larger gender jobless gap as compared to the gender inactivity gap.
Adjusting separately for wages, where we assume for example that females earn 50% of
male wages, the costs as a share of GDP range from -0.2% in Rwanda to 2% in India.
This compares to the -0.5% and 4.4% estimates in our original inactivity rate
calculations, respectively. Putting it all together using the upper bound joblessness rates,
accounting for a 50% male-female wage gap, and incorporating demand elasticities, we
Iind that the cost oI girls` joblessness, relative to that oI boys`, ranges Irom -0.1% in
Rwanda to 1.2% in India. The cost oI girls` joblessness in Nigeria, which had the highest
inactivity rates (not adjusted for labor demand elasticities or male-female wage gaps) is
1.0%.
The costs of joblessness should be seen as an underestimate of the true overall
costs a society pays due to high young women`s exclusion from labor markets.
Joblessness has many implications that were not taken into consideration in the
calculation oI the estimated costs on the country`s productivity. These costs may include
psychological distress costs since the unemployed typically face a loss of self esteem, and

18
The point estimates when using different combinations of assumptions on the jobless rate, male-female
or adult-youth wage rates, and elasticities of demand are available upon request from the authors.
19
the foregone opportunity to acquire human capital through on-the-job training and
learning (see sources cited in Cunningham et al. 2008). Joblessness also may lead to
other risky behaviors to earn money including risky sexual behavior, illegal trade, or
underground activities. The costs above exclude the cumulative effects these may have.
The costs also exclude the impacts of a continued cycle of intergenerational poverty as a
result oI girls` Iailure to reach their Iull economic potential.
It is important to note that the costs of joblessness seems far lower than the costs
of school dropout, but this is largely due to the fact that we are measuring the costs of
each behavior over different time frames. While a typical school-leaving behavior in
developing countries is one oI gradual 'dropping out over a short period, as seen by
frequent absenteeism, increasing work (in the market or home) and eventual
abandonment, the drop-out decision is typically terminal. Girls will not and often
cannot return to school later in their lives thereby affecting their entire earnings
(productivity) path for the rest of their lives. Thus, we measure foregone earnings over
the lifetime. Conversely, women`s entry to and exit Irom the labor market is quite
Irequent. So the 'jobless behavior is oIten short term and does not necessarily have
lifetime consequences for future productivity.
19
We thus measure joblessness for the year
that it is observed rather than aggregating across the girl`s liIetimes.

5. Gi rls with children: The cost of adolescent pregnancy
Adolescent pregnancy rates are highest in the African countries in our sample but
the total number of adolescent pregnancies is greatest in the populous India, Brazil and
Bangladesh. For example, for every 1,000 girls age 15-19 in Uganda and Malawi, 148
and 133, respectively, have given birth. This compares to 10 of every 1,000 adolescent
girls in China, lower than the US or UK, or 67 of every 1,000 adolescent girls in India
(Figure 8). However, nearly four million adolescent girls give birth every year in India
and more than half a million in Bangladesh, as compared to 367,000 in Uganda and
Malawi combined. China, though the most populous country, has such low adolescent

19
While one might argue that being out of the labor force leads to skills obsolescence and, thus, lower
earnings later in the work life, the deterioration of skills has not been well documented and is likely to pale
next to the actual learning, or the signaling, from completing the next level of education.
20
pregnancy rates that its total number of births per year only exceeds the combined
number of births in Uganda and Malawi by 165,000.
The lifetime opportunity cost related to adolescent pregnancy measured by the
young mother`s Ioregone annual income over her lifetime ranges from 1 percent of
annual GDP in China to 30 percent of annual GDP in Uganda. Malawi and Nigeria also
have very high costs, equal to 27%, and 26% of GDP, respectively (Figure 9). Unlike in
the education estimates, only China matches the United States, Sweden and Norway for
having a small impact of adolescent pregnancy on output. Even the Indian estimates are
12% of annual GDP, which when presented in PPP-adjusted dollars, equals nearly
US$400 billion.
The regional differences do not break down as clearly for adolescent pregnancy as
they did for education. While the African countries in the sample incur the highest costs,
as a share of GDP, up to 30% in Uganda, Bangladesh (11%) shows that Asian countries
are missing out by not better supporting their girls and Latin America faces similar
challenges with the costs in Paraguay at 12%.
The PPP-adjusted dollar costs tell a slightly different story, where the costs to
India are the largest of the sample, followed by Brazil (Table 3). Brazil would have
greater productivity equal to more than US$3.5 billion if teen girls delayed pregnancy
until their early twenties, while India`s productivity would be US$7.7 billion higher. At
the other extreme is Malawi, where the costs are US$57.8 million (PPP adjusted) but as a
share of GDP the cost is 27%. The differential reflects higher wages in Brazil nearly
ten times those of Malawi. Moreover, a larger population in Brazil, compared to Malawi,
results in nearly six times the number of total adolescent births in Brazil in a single year.
The assumptions underlying the estimates are conservative, namely that girls who
give birth will truncate their education and the wage gap with women who delay
pregnancy will persist over the lifetime. That having been said, when we forego that
assumption and instead apply a 'motherhood tax, the costs over a liIetime are Iar lower
in no case more than 2% of GDP in Uganda. The limitations of such an approach is that
the 'tax is drawn Irom literature in the United States, a wage market economy where it
is expected that adolescent mothers face a decidedly different reality that those in
developing countries. Thus, while we present such an approach to highlight the range of
21
possibilities, we turn back to our main calculations to get a sense of the magnitude of this
issue.
Again, we highlight that these cost estimates are underestimated in the sense that
we only consider the lost productivity in the labor market, thus not estimating the costs
incurred to women`s health, the possible implications Ior the child`s Iuture productivity
as indicated by studies that show that children of adolescent mothers have lower school
attainment rates, the social costs of unwed adolescent mothers, and so forth. Also, due to
data availability, we cannot account mothers under the age of 15 or those who have paid
the ultimate price of adolescent pregnancy: the girls who die from its complications.

6. A better path for gi rls: Conclusions and policy implications
Social inclusion of adolescent girls that keeps them on a path to achieving their
maximum human potential will result in significant economic growth. This paper has
presented simple non-parametric methodologies to roughly quantify the costs incurred by
societies as a result of the social exclusion of adolescent girls. The estimates are limited
to the opportunity costs, which measure the losses in terms of potential productivity gains
and income young girls could have achieved if they were employed, if they had delayed
pregnancy, or if they had attained higher educational levels. Using secondary data drawn
from the International Labour Organization, World Bank, and World Health
Organization, we estimate the costs in several African countries (Burundi, Ethiopia,
Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda) and a few Latin
American (Brazil and Paraguay), and South Asian (India and Bangladesh) and East Asian
(China) countries.
The rough estimates showed that marginal investments in girls can have a
substantial impact on GDP growth and well-being. If girls just completed one higher
level of education, the total value of productivity generated over the work life of those
girls is equivalent to nearly one year`s GDP (Burundi), equivalent to GDP growth that is
2 percentage points higher in each year that these more educated girls would be working.
The additional growth would be equivalent to more than 25 percent of annual GDP in the
other African countries in the sample (except Ethiopia), or an increase in growth rates by
one to 0.5 percentage points annually. While girls` contribution to overall output is much
22
smaller in the large economies of China and India, the total foregone productivity reaches
into the billions of dollars. When adjusting these figures for innate ability bias and labor
demand elasticities, the point estimates fall by nearly half, but they still show that more
educated girls would have significant impacts on overall economic growth.
Girls` joblessness imposes significant annual productivity losses. II girls`
inactivity activity were the same as that of women, national economies would grow by
0.8 to 5.4 percentage points annually. However, once accounting for those non-working
girls who are in school, the costs fall to zero in most of our sample since adult women are
more inactive than adolescent girls. And iI girls` and boys` economic activity rates were
equal, similar additions to GDP would be observed, while accounting for students only
slightly reduces the estimates. Comparing the cost of inactivity to the cost of joblessness,
the greatest gains are in India, where the girl-boy employment gap is greatest and,
compared to other countries with similar gaps, wages are high.
The lifetime opportunity cost related to adolescent pregnancy measured by the
young mother`s Ioregone annual income over her liIetime ranges from 1 percent of
annual GDP in China to 30 percent of annual GDP in Uganda. Malawi, and Nigeria also
have very high costs, equal to 27% and 26%, of GDP. Again, while the measured
impacts are small relative to GDP in China the lost productivity value is quite substantial.
Assuming a different transmission mechanism that girls do not abandon school due to
pregnancy but instead limit their labor supply time and type of work; i.e. the motherhood
tax the costs for Uganda, for example, fall to 1% of GDP.
20

Taken together, the benefits are substantial. For example, imagine that all 1.6
million adolescent girls in Kenya completed secondary school and that the 220,098
adolescent mothers were employed instead of falling pregnant so early. The cumulative
effect could have added US$3.4 billion on the Kenya`s gross income every year. This is
equivalent to the entire Kenyan construction sector.
The costs presented in this paper underestimate the true cost of not investing in
girls. The costs computed are only economic ones, and they should be seen as a lower
bound to the true social costs. The true costs, which include lower health status of the
children of these women, lower life expectancy, skill obsolescence of jobless girls, less

20
The full set of estimates are available from the authors, upon request.
23
social empowerment, and so forth (Cunningham et. al. 2008), would increase the cost
estimates many-fold.
Policy recommendations to expand investments in girls can be classified into
three general areas: investing in girls, counting girls, and advocating for girls.
21


I nvest in gi rls
Increasing funding for adolescent girls and tracking what it achieves
22
will benefit
both today`s girls and tomorrow`s girls by providing services to today`s girls and learning
from those experiences to better provide for girls tomorrow. Incentives for school
attendance through conditional cash transfers (Schady and Fiszbein 2009) or scholarships
(Angrist et. al. 2002) have been shown to keep girls in school are cost effective
interventions. While the evidence of success and cost effectiveness in supply-side
interventions is much scarcer than demand-side interventions, governments could
consider expanding primary school facilities to house secondary school classes, investing
in non-formal schooling options to reach the most vulnerable girls, and tracking
enrollment, completion rates, and the percentage of girls at grade for age to measure
progress (Cunningham et. al. 2008b).
Girls` engagement in the labor market could be enhanced through building
marketable skills, facilitating the labor force entry process, and alleviating gender
constraints and expectations. Skills could be enhanced be improving the relevance of
educational curricula, developing after-school tutoring and mentoring programs,
providing financial education programs, and funding internships, apprenticeships and
training opportunities to promote girls` transitions to saIe and productive livelihoods.
Teaching job intermediation skills or providing information for the location of jobs may
facilitate the school-to-work transition. And working with families, who may make
decisions on behalf of girls, to value the contribution that girls make to the labor market

21
A recent global movement to support adolescent girls has defined a set of policy recommendations that
are essential, yet feasible, for governments to implement and for the development community to support.
The full list of recommendations includes 10 policy actions. For more information, please see:
http://www.coalitionforadolescentgirls.org/10_actions. Only those relevant to the analysis in this paper are
reported here.
22
Official Development Assistance figures from 2005-2006 state that 2.17% of total aid ($54.3 billion) list
gender equality as the principle objective. Assuming the majority of that aid goes to grown women, less
than two cents per aid dollar is directed to girls.
24
may facilitate their acceptance for their daughters, wives, mothers, and sisters to engage
in market work (Cunningham et al 2010).
To invest in girls` health, emerging evidence is Iinding that unconditional cash
transfers can change girls` behaviors (mostly by delayed marriage and childbearing, see
Baird et al 2010), but supply-side interventions may also be effective. Re-orienting
health delivery systems to provide adolescent girls with services that are accessible,
customized, confidential, and nonjudgmental could provide girls with information to
make good sexual health choices, better support them to prevent unwanted
circumstances, and screen for reproductive and sexual health risks such as domestic
violence and unintended pregnancy (Cunningham et. al. 2008b).

Count gi rls
Providing programs is not sufficient since entry to programs often depends on
recognition that girls exist. This requires an effort by governments to register all
newborns and provide birth certificates to ensure access to health services and education
(Cunningham et al, 2008b). And once the girls (and boys) are older, it is necessary to
furnish them with government-issued identification cards so that they may continue to
access educational opportunities, jobs, and health services.
To monitor program success, it is necessary to collect data on adolescents and
disaggregate it by age and gender to assess whether programs are reaching adolescent
girls. By tracking program beneficiaries by age, gender, marital status, location, family
income and school enrollment status in all programs and sectors, program managers and
governments can better assess whether programs are reaching adolescent girls
especially the most vulnerable. Regularly reporting results will increase accountability,
share learning, target solutions, demonstrate success, and catalyze more resources.

Advocate for gi rls
Finally, governments could better advocate for girls at two levels. First,
governments could make the law work better for adolescent girls by repealing laws that
discriminate against girls in the workplace, schools, or family and ensure equality of
access to health services, education, jobs and earnings, credit, and property ownership.
25
Second, they could mobilize communities, families, men and boys to support adolescent
girls. They could sponsor programs or provide incentives to engage religious and
community leaders and head teachers to foster healthier, more supportive communities
where girls can create and execute their own solutions (Cunningham et. al. 2008b).
This paper offers a glimpse of what economies are missing when we fail to invest
in girls. Even by the most conservative estimates, we see that the economic costs are in
the billions. This, of course, is to say nothing of the massive social and intergenerational
costs. All told, we can be certain we`re missing out on an awIul lot. The challenge for
policy makers, development experts, donors, corporations, NGOs working on the ground
everyone really is to intervene beIore things in a girl`s liIe go sideways. II we manage
that, the world will finally realize this tremendous opportunity for change.
26
Tables and Figures

Figure 1: Dropout Rates for Primary and Secondary Education, Girls


Source: WB EdStats, derived Irom the variable 'net enrollment rates at the primary and secondary
level

Figure 2: Lifetime Cost of Girl Primary and Secondary School Dropout, as % of GDP

Source: Authors` computations based on data Irom ILO KILM, WDI and WB EdStats



1 1 1
7 7
18
24
23
27
39
40
41
23
3
6
11
1
83
80
64
88
78
87
38
0
10
20
30
40
30
60
70
80
90
100
lemale rlmary uropouL 8aLe lemale Secondary uropouL 8aLe
0 0 0 0 0
3
11
13 14
18
20
23
0 0 0 0 0
10
13
34
24
32
48
68
0
10
20
30
40
30
60
70
80
CosL of uropouL Cu rlmary CosL of uropouL Cu Secondary
27
Figure 3: Youth Female Inactivity Rates


Source: Authors` computations based on data Irom ILO and KILM

Figure 4 Difference between the Inactivity Rate of Adolescent Girls and Adult Women
(Target 1), in percentage points



Source: Authors` computations based on data Irom ILO KILM and WDI


26
43
49
30 31
37
60
61
67
78
83
83
0
10
20
30
40
30
60
70
80
90
1
6
7 7
11
13
13
18
20
29
32
0
3
10
13
20
23
30
33
28

Figure 5: Difference between the Youth Female and Youth Male Inactivity Rates (Target
2), in percentage points


Source: Authors` computations based on data Irom ILO KILM and WDI


Figure 6: Cost of Girl Inactivity and Joblessness, if Equal to Adult Female Inactivity or
Joblessness as % of annual GDP (Target 1)


Note: Jobless-lower bound reduces the inactivity rate by gross upper secondary enrolment rates thereby
dropping students . Jobless-upper bound reduces the inactivity rate by gross upper secondary and by partial
net lower secondary thereby dropping students.
Source: Authors` computations based on data Irom ILO KILM and WDI

-1
2
3
3
3
12
19
21
29
36
-3
0
3
10
13
20
23
30
33
40
-6.0
-4.0
-2.0
0.0
2.0
4.0
6.0
lnacLlvlLy !obless-lower bound !obless-upper bound
29
Figure 7: Cost of Girl Inactivity or Joblessness, relative to Boy`s Inactivity or Joblessness
Rates, as % of annual GDP (Target 2)


Note: Jobless-lower bound reduces the inactivity rate by gross upper secondary enrolment rates thereby
dropping students . Jobless-upper bound reduces the inactivity rate by gross upper secondary and by partial
net lower secondary thereby dropping students.
Source: Authors` computations based on data Irom ILO KILM and WDI

Figure 8: Adolescent Fertility Rate per 1000 Adolescent Girl, 2007



Source: World Bank HNPStats


-1.0
0.0
1.0
2.0
3.0
4.0
3.0
6.0
lnacLlvlLy !obless-lower bound !obless-upper bound
8 8 10
24
33
67
70 72
73
102 103
124
130
133
148
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
AdolescenL ferLlllLy raLe per 1000 women (13-19)
30
Figure 9: The Lifetime Cost of Adolescent Pregnancy of Current Cohort of 15-19 Year
Old Girls, as a Share of Annual GDP


Source: Authors` computations based on data Irom ILO KILM, WDI, and World Bank HNPStats

1 1 1
1
2
10
11
12
12
13
17
18
26
27
30
0
3
10
13
20
23
30
33
LlfeLlme CosL of Cu
31
Table 1: Life time Cost Estimates of Girls Dropping out of Primary and Secondary
Education
Country Life time Cost of early
school leaving USD
million
Cost of early school
leaving %GDP
Cost of early school
leaving % GDP
developing countries
adj usted for labor
elasticity
Education premium per person
Primary Secondary Primary Secondary Primary Secondary Percentage increase in
lifetime earnings, prim
over no edu
Percentage
increase in
lifetime
earnings, sec
over prim
Burundi 719 1970 24.83% 68.04% 21.96% 46.44% 24% 15%
China 817 32336 0.01% 0.46% 0.01% 0.44% 21% 21%
Ethiopia 2090 6803 2.98% 9.70% 2.47% 6.89% 15% 14%
India 1315 10610 0.04% 0.34% 0.04% 0.34% 27% 26%
Kenya 11501 27415 19.97% 47.60% 18.85% 41.04% 43% 30%
Nigeria 34157 40366 10.76% 12.72% 8.18% 8.38% 23% 13%
Norway 144 399 0.05% 0.14% - - 8% 9%
Senegal 2801 4861 13.54% 23.51% 11.19% 16.77% 24% 15%
Sweden 570 122 0.17% 0.04% - - 9% 9%
Tanzania 8727 15833 17.86% 32.40% 14.76% 21.75% 24% 15%
Uganda 3843 9742 13.23% 33.55% 11.7% 22.90% 24% 15%
UK 705 4041 0.03% 0.19% - - 9% 8%
US 29684 62783 0.21% 0.45% - - 8% 9%
Source: Authors` computations based on data Irom ILO KILM, WDI and WB EdStats


32
Table 2: Cost of Girls Inactivity- Target 1 (youth female inactivity rate = adult female
inactivity rate), Target 2 (youth female inactivity rate = youth male inactivity rate)

I nactivity Rates %
Targets Female
I nactivity, 000
Cost, million USD
PPP
Cost, % GDP

Country
Y
o
u
t
h

F
e
m
a
l
e


Y
o
u
t
h

M
a
l
e


A
d
u
l
t

F
e
m
a
l
e


T
a
r
g
e
t

1


F
Y
J
R

=

F
A
J
R

T
a
r
g
e
t

2

F
Y
J
R

=

M
Y
J
R


C
o
s
t

f
o
r

T
a
r
g
e
t

1

C
o
s
t

f
o
r

T
a
r
g
e
t

2

T
a
r
g
e
t

1

T
a
r
g
e
t

2

Bangladesh 50% 38% 40% 1729 1970 $2,660 $3,030 1.2% 1.3%
Brazil 57% 38% 43% 2251 3210 $23,521 $33,534 1.2% 1.7%
Ethiopia 26% 21% 19% 606 404 $646 $431 0.8% 0.6%
India 78% 42% 65% 14083 39455 $58,941 $165,129 1.6% 4.4%
Nigeria 83% 62% 51% 4988 3266 $17,917 $11,732 5.4% 3.5%
Norway 45% 49% 38% 22 -11 $1,199 $ (610) 0.4% -0.2%
Paraguay 61% 32% 41% 129 187 $644 $935 2.2% 3.3%
South Africa 85% 80% 57% 1440 273 $20,032 $3,797 3.9% 0.7%
Sweden 60% 60% 41% 108 -5 $4,014 $ (203) 1.1% -0.1%
United Kingdom 49% 46% 48% 28 92 $1,043 $3,449 0.0% 0.2%
United States 51% 47% 45% 1307 754 $61,821 $35,685 0.4% 0.3%
Source: Authors` computations based on data Irom ILO KILM and WDI
Table 3: Costs Associated with Adolescent Pregnancy
Country Total Adolescent
Bi rths per year
Total Cost per year,
USD PPP
Adolescent
0RWKHUV
Foregone Annual
I ncome
Total life time
cost %GDP
Bangladesh 576,868
$ 442,628,523 $ 767 11%
Brazil 618,114
$ 3,527,860,193 $ 5,707 10%
China 525,445
$ 1,451,660,440 $ 2,763 1%
Ethiopia 457,482
$ 207,975,905 $ 455 15%
India 3,812,362
$ 7,667,428,958 $ 2,011 12%
Kenya 220,098
$ 193,850,761 $ 881 17%
Malawi 106,444
$ 57,821,320 $ 543 27%
Nigeria 994,023
$ 1,652,468,504 $ 1,662 26%
Norway 1,297
$ 33,976,032 $ 26,193 1%
Paraguay 23,370
$ 63,467,790 $ 2,716 12%
Sweden 2,334
$ 50,894,510 $ 21,804 1%
Tanzania 300,951
$ 179,011,003 $ 595 18%
Uganda 261,064
$ 175,646,582 $ 673 30%
UK 45,908
$ 891,394,152 $ 19,417 2%
US 79,288
$ 1,753,020,638 $ 22,110 1%
Source: Authors` computations based on data Irom ILO KILM, WDI and WB HNPStats
33
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