I understand what you're after, but I haven't seen a tidy way of converting improvements in gender equality to an all-up measure of well-being or income. That's partly for the reasons that David T states that gender equality is multi-faceted, plus if downstream benefits materialize gradually, they are hard to empirically isolate and quantify. In addition, promoting equality isn't just about the instrumental benefits like better use of human talent --> higher GDP, but also equality of opportunity being valuable per se, even if not exercised. I think if you tried to use standard methods to put a dollar value on rights, e.g., elicited women's WTP for equal rights, you wouldn't get a very informative answer. If someone asked me how much I value my right to free speech or freedom of religion, I would have nothing to anchor my answer and suspect it would be mostly noise. In addition, preferences adapt to circumstances. In some of my other work in India (see last paragraph of section 4.3), many women with extremely limited financial say in their household said they didn't want any more say than they had, and that men should control those decisions. I'm skeptical of taking that response at face value and concluding that increasing women's very low agency would not be welfare-improving for them.
That's going to be difficult to untangle, because improvements to some aspects like educational opportunities and shifts in generational attitudes take time to pay dividends and the causality plausibly runs both ways. Half the population is offered direct wellbeing improvements and the overall economic impact of education increased workforce participation is generally positive, but also countries most successful in tackling gender inequality tend to be ones that have already experienced positive trends in their development.
And also, of course, because there are a lot of different measures of gender equality and human wellbeing.
Countries which already have higher gender equality tend to do a lot better in HDI indicators and somewhat better in subjective wellbeing indicators, but there are obviously many other factors at play.
During discussions, the government of Haryana expressed interest in refining a policy aimed at correcting the skewed sex ratio. The policy involved financial incentives for families that have daughters and opt for sterilization—effectively, though not overtly, paying people to have daughters.
I realise this is not central to the post since by the sound of it you ended up not working on this, but what is this about? Who gets paid financial incentives when? How does this end up paying people to have daughters?
Several Indian states have policies that offer payments to families that have daughters, sometimes restricting it to below-poverty-line families. Sometimes the ongoing payments are conditional on being in school, not getting married early, etc. It looks like the Haryana policy no longer requires sterilization, but it used to. Here's an excerpt from a paper on the previous version, Devi Rupak:
"In light of these trends, Devirupak seeks to promote a one-child norm and to decrease the sex ratio at birth. It provides monthly benefits, for a period of 20 years, to couples who become sterilized after having one child (of either sex), or two girls (and no boy). The incentive offered to parents of one girl is larger than the amount that parents of one boy or two girls receive. Couples who remain childless, have a boy and a girl, or have more than two children receive nothing."
(That policy had dual goals of reducing fertility and improving the skewed sex ratio and ended up making the sex ratio more male-skewed. That part was just bad design and is fixable. But even if fixed, I don't love this approach to the problem.)
Executive summary: Dismantling restrictive gender norms in low-income countries through educational interventions is a promising and neglected opportunity to advance gender equality and women's rights.
Key points:
A school-based intervention in India successfully shifted students' gender attitudes and behaviors, with effects persisting years later.
The program was particularly effective for boys and had spillover effects on their fathers' attitudes.
Changing norms is tractable but complex, requiring context-specific approaches and long-term commitment.
Gender norm change is relatively neglected compared to other gender equality efforts, especially evidence-based interventions.
Economic development alone does not solve all gender inequality issues; targeted norm change efforts are still needed.
Valuing rights and freedoms is important beyond just quantifiable economic benefits, though challenging to measure.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.
Can you tell us about how strongly changes in gender equality predict changes in measures of human wellbeing?
I understand what you're after, but I haven't seen a tidy way of converting improvements in gender equality to an all-up measure of well-being or income. That's partly for the reasons that David T states that gender equality is multi-faceted, plus if downstream benefits materialize gradually, they are hard to empirically isolate and quantify. In addition, promoting equality isn't just about the instrumental benefits like better use of human talent --> higher GDP, but also equality of opportunity being valuable per se, even if not exercised. I think if you tried to use standard methods to put a dollar value on rights, e.g., elicited women's WTP for equal rights, you wouldn't get a very informative answer. If someone asked me how much I value my right to free speech or freedom of religion, I would have nothing to anchor my answer and suspect it would be mostly noise. In addition, preferences adapt to circumstances. In some of my other work in India (see last paragraph of section 4.3), many women with extremely limited financial say in their household said they didn't want any more say than they had, and that men should control those decisions. I'm skeptical of taking that response at face value and concluding that increasing women's very low agency would not be welfare-improving for them.
That's going to be difficult to untangle, because improvements to some aspects like educational opportunities and shifts in generational attitudes take time to pay dividends and the causality plausibly runs both ways. Half the population is offered direct wellbeing improvements and the overall economic impact of education increased workforce participation is generally positive, but also countries most successful in tackling gender inequality tend to be ones that have already experienced positive trends in their development.
And also, of course, because there are a lot of different measures of gender equality and human wellbeing.
Countries which already have higher gender equality tend to do a lot better in HDI indicators and somewhat better in subjective wellbeing indicators, but there are obviously many other factors at play.
I realise this is not central to the post since by the sound of it you ended up not working on this, but what is this about? Who gets paid financial incentives when? How does this end up paying people to have daughters?
Several Indian states have policies that offer payments to families that have daughters, sometimes restricting it to below-poverty-line families. Sometimes the ongoing payments are conditional on being in school, not getting married early, etc. It looks like the Haryana policy no longer requires sterilization, but it used to. Here's an excerpt from a paper on the previous version, Devi Rupak:
"In light of these trends, Devirupak seeks to promote a one-child norm and to decrease the sex ratio at birth. It provides monthly benefits, for a period of 20 years, to couples who become sterilized after having one child (of either sex), or two girls (and no boy). The incentive offered to parents of one girl is larger than the amount that parents of one boy or two girls receive. Couples who remain childless, have a boy and a girl, or have more than two children receive nothing."
(That policy had dual goals of reducing fertility and improving the skewed sex ratio and ended up making the sex ratio more male-skewed. That part was just bad design and is fixable. But even if fixed, I don't love this approach to the problem.)
For people interested in this topic, I've found Alice Evans' writing interesting.
Executive summary: Dismantling restrictive gender norms in low-income countries through educational interventions is a promising and neglected opportunity to advance gender equality and women's rights.
Key points:
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.