'Wealth is not everything to get children enrolled in school'

06 Feb, 2009

A World Bank study has found that wealth is crucial in determining child activities but not everything for enrolment of children in school by getting them out of work. In case of rural girls, non-parametric analysis shows a universal increase in school enrolment for rural girls from 1998 to 2006 and this increase is rather independent of wealth (measured by per capita expenditure).
Multinomial logit regression further shows that wealth is insignificant in determining rural girls' activity decisions. In a Policy Research Working Paper on "Wealth Crucial but Not Sufficient Evidence from Pakistan on Economic Growth, Child Labour, and Schooling", released by World Bank's Economic Policy and Poverty Unit, Finance and Private Sector Development recently, s shows that the relationship between wealth and child activities is contingent on poverty and survey rounds.
Thus, conditional cash transfer or cash transfer programs alone cannot be sufficient to get children out of work and go to school. Rather, supply side interventions, which focus on strengthening the education system are also crucial. WB study suggested that the demand side intervention should not just focus on the poorest of the poor, but rather have a wider targeting strategy.

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