Remittances and Household-level Gender Disparity in Education Attainment: Evidence from Pakistan

Abstract This paper focuses on a key gender norm prevalent in many developing economies, particularly in South Asian economies, whereby the education of males is preferred over females within a household—giving rise to disparities in education attainment. Specifically, we investigate the impact of remittances on gender disparity in educational attainment. We construct household-level measures of gender disparity in mean years of schooling and out-of-school children using the Pakistan Social and Living Standard Measurement Survey (PSLM) 2019–2020. Using propensity score matching methods we construct counterfactuals that help in estimating the causal impact of remittances on gender disparity in educational attainment. Our results indicate that gender disparity against women both in terms of mean years of schooling and out-of-school children declines in households that receive remittances. Moreover, the disparity-reducing impact of remittances is robust to different specifications of propensity score matching methods. The endogenous treatment effects model also shows that the remittances reduce household level gender disparity in education, although the impact is more pronounced in urban areas compared to rural areas. These results suggests that remittances are one of the key channels that result in the transformational change in gender norms related to education. Subject classification codes: J16, F24, I24, R23