Are Girls the Fairer Sex in India? Revisiting Intra-Household Allocation of Education Expenditure

SummaryUsing a Hurdle model, the paper finds that although significant progress in gender equality in education was achieved during 1993–2005, pro-male gender bias still exists in the within-household allocation of educational expenditure. This bias occurs primarily through differential spending on sons and daughters in the primary and middle school age groups, but through the decision to enroll sons and not daughters in the secondary school age group. Bias is substantially greater in rural than urban areas. An important mechanism through which households spend less on girls is by sending sons to private schools and daughters to the fee-free government schools.