Getting girls into school: Evidence from a scholarship program in Cambodia

Type Report
Title Getting girls into school: Evidence from a scholarship program in Cambodia
Author(s)
Volume 3910
Publication (Day/Month/Year) 2006
Publisher World Bank
URL http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2006/08/02/000160016_20060802​131157/Rendered/PDF/367270KH0Girls1ver0P07066801PUBLIC1.pdf
Abstract
Increasing the schooling attainment of girls is a challenge in much of the developing world. In this paper we evaluate the impact of a program that gives scholarships to girls making the transition between the last year of primary school and the first year of secondary school in Cambodia. We show that the scholarship program had a large, positive effect on the school enrollment and attendance of girls. Our preferred set of estimates suggest program effects on enrollment and attendance at program schools of 30 to 43 percentage points; scholarship recipients were also more likely to be enrolled at any school (not just program schools) by a margin of 22 to 33 percentage points. The impact of the JFPR program appears to have been largest among girls with the lowest socioeconomic status at baseline. The results we present are robust to a variety of controls for observable differences between scholarship recipients and non-recipients, to unobserved heterogeneity across girls, and to selective attrition out of the sample.

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