Educating girls quite possibly yields a higher rate of return than any other investment available in the developing world. Women's education may be unusual territory for economists, but enhancing women's contribution to development is actually as much an economic as a social issue. And economics, with its emphasis on incentives, provides guideposts that point to an explanation for why so many girls are deprived of an education.
对女孩进行教育的回报率很可能高于发展中国家的任何其他投资。对于经济学家来说，妇女教育可能是一个不同寻常的领域，但提高妇女对发展的贡献实际上既是一个经济问题，也是一个社会问题。强调激励的经济学给为什么这么多女孩被剥夺了受教育的机会提供了解释。
Parents in low-income countries fail to invest in their daughters because they do not expect them to make an economic contribution to the family: girls grow up only to marry into somebody else's family and bear children. Girls are thus seen as less valuable than boys and are kept at home to do housework while their brothers are sent to school - the prophecy becomes self- fulfilling, trapping women in a vicious circle of neglect.
低收入国家的父母没有对女儿进行投资，因为他们不希望女儿为家庭做出经济贡献：女孩长大后只会嫁到别人家里生孩子。因此，女孩认为不如男孩有价值，被留在家里做家务，而她们的兄弟被送去学校——预言会变成现实，女性困在被忽视的恶性循环中。
An educated mother, on the other hand, has greater earning abilities outside the home and faces an entirely different set of choices. She is likely to have fewer but healthier children and can insist on the development of all her children, ensuring that her daughters are given a fair chance. The education of her daughters then makes it much more likely that the next generation of girls, as well as of boys, will be educated and healthy. The vicious circle is thus transformed into a virtuous circle.
另一方面，受过教育的母亲在家庭之外有更高的赚钱能力，面临着完全不同的选择。她可能会有较少但更健康的孩子，并且可以坚持让所有孩子都成长，确保女儿们有一个公平的机会。女儿们的教育使下一代女孩和男孩更有可能受到教育和健康。这样，恶性循环就转变为良性循环。
Few will dispute that educating women has great social benefits. But it has enormous economic advantages as well. Most obviously, there is the direct effect of education on the wages of female workers. Wages rise by 10 to 20 per cent for each additional year of schooling. Such big returns are impressive by the standard of other available investments, but they are just the beginning. Educating women also has a significant impact on health practices, including family planning.
很少有人会质疑女性教育具有巨大的社会效益，但其实它也有巨大的经济优势。最明显的是，教育对女工的工资有直接影响。每多上一年学，工资就会上涨10%至20%。以其他可用投资的标准来看，如此大的回报令人印象深刻，但这只是一个开始。女性教育还会对包括计划生育在内的保健做法产生重大影响。
网友评论