任务型读写
Educating girls quite possibly harvests a higher rate of return than any other investment available in
the developing world.Women's education may be an unusual field for economists, but increasing women's
contribution to development is actually as much an economic issue as a social one. And economics, with
its focus on incentives(鼓励), provides an explanation for why so many girls are deprived of(剥夺)an
education.
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(预言)becomes self fulfilling, trapping women in a
vicious circle(恶性循环)of neglect.
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.
Few will argue 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 percent 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 effect on health practices, including family planning.
