Free bikes for schoolgirls in Northern India
The IGC Bihar programme has sponsored two researchers, Karthik Muralidharan (University of California, San Diego) and Nishith Prakash (University of Connecticut), to investigate the effect of an initiative aimed at encouraging more girls to stay in school. The government of Bihar, northern India, is providing every schoolgirl aged 14 with money to buy a bike.
The ‘Mukhyamantri Balika Cycle Yojna’ (Chief Minister's bicycle programme for secondary school girls) was introduced in 2007 and has been one of the flagship programmes of the government of Bihar. The research looks into whether this programme has been successful in bridging the gap between boys and girls in school – one of the Millennium Development Goals.
So far the Government of Bihar has already spent Rs. 174.36 crores on this programme – equivalent to many millions of dollars – but there is no reliable estimate of the impact of the programme or any attempt to estimate a rate of return on this investment. To help fill this gap, the study uses a technique the researchers call a ‘difference-in-difference-in-difference’ approach.
Their strategy is similar to the standard ‘difference-in-difference’ technique, where the change in enrolment for the girls would be compared with the change in enrolment for the boys (who did not receive any bicycles), to see how much more the enrolment of girls increased. But the researchers point out that because the enrolment of girls may well have been rising anyway, it is unclear that this difference gives a fair picture.
To isolate the effect further, Muralidharan and Prakash look at the bordering state of Jharkhand, where girls did not receive any free bikes. They look at how much girls enrolment there is going up compared with the boys and then compare this with how much girls enrolment in Bihar is going up compared with the boys. If the difference between girls and boys is higher in Bihar than in Jharkhand, then – other statistical checks withstanding – the research has identified a positive effect from the bicycle programme.
The results are ‘super preliminary’ according to co-author Nishith Prakash, but they do show that giving free bikes to girls has helped to bridge the gap by between 20% and 25%. In many Bihari schools, there were around 100 boys for every 60 girls. Since the bicycle programme was introduced, the study suggests that there are now around 70 girls for every 100 boys.
Ideas for growth
Improving girls’ education directly contributes to growth in two ways. First, by directly improving the human capital of women in the labour force, making them more productive. Second, by indirectly improving the human capital of the next generation – several studies have shown that mothers pass a lot of their education and attitudes to learning to their children.
Having more girls in school also contributes to ‘inclusive’ growth. It helps women – a traditionally disadvantaged group in Indian society – participate more directly in the growth of the Indian economy. It does this through better job opportunities, by improving their bargaining position in the household, and by providing them with the 'capabilities' (in Amartya Sen's terminology) to live more meaningful lives in a world where the returns to education appear to be increasing.
A fundamental policy challenge in many developing countries is therefore to identify cost-effective and scalable policies that improve the schooling of girls. While hundreds of schemes have been launched as pilots and then discarded when the government changes, the bicycle programme in Bihar is one that has caught the imagination of voters as well as political leaders and its high visibility has led to interest in whether it can be replicated in other parts of India. This research will help policymakers decide on the next steps.
The researchers still want to go further, however. They are now using GPS data on where girls live to see if the bikes had a greater effect for girls who live further away from the school. The questions continue – but then so does the research.
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