1867. Gender Disparity in South Asia: Comparisons Between and Within Countries

Deon Filmer, Elizabeth M. King, and Lant Pritchett
(January 1998)

While gender disparities in health and education outcomes are higher on average in South Asian than in other countries, the large within country differences in gender disparity, between Indian states or Pakistani provinces, demand more local explanations.

Using data assembled from the Demographic Health Surveys of over 50 countries and from the National Family Health Surveys of individual states in India, Filmer, King, and Pritchett create a new data set of comparable indicators of gender disparity. They establish three findings:

• As is by now well-known, the level of gender disparities in health and education outcomes for girls in South Asia is the highest in the world.
• Even within South Asia, and within India or Pakistan, there are huge variations in gender disparity. Differences in gender disparity among Indian states or among provinces of Pakistan are typically greater than those among the world's nations. The ratio of female to male child mortality in one Indian state (Haryana) is worse than in any country in the world, although in another state (Tamil Nadu) it is lower than in all but three countries.
• Across and within the set of developing nations, gender disparity is not only a phenomenon of poverty. There is almost no correlation between per capita income and the gender disparities in health and education outcomes. So although absolute levels of health and education outcomes for girls are strongly related to economic conditions, the disparities between outcomes for girls and boys are not.

Understanding what causes such great gender disparity within South Asia is the next pressing question for researchers.

This paper—a product of Poverty and Human Resources, Development Research Group—is part of a larger effort in the group to understand the determinants of gender differentials. The study was funded by the Bank's Research Support Budget under the research project "Explaining Gender Disparity in South Asia" (RPO 681-29). Copies of this paper are available free from the World Bank, 1818 H Street NW, Washington, DC 20433. Please contact Sheila Fallon, room MC3-638, telephone 202-473-8009, fax 202-522-1153, Internet address sfallon@worldbank.org. (59 pages)

The full report is available in PDF format.