Economists have commonly focused on per-capita income as the primary indicator of development, although there are several other indicators of development and well-being.1 In mainstream economic theory, education often represents one important aspect of human capital and enters the production function with a positive coefficient. Lower male or female educationallevelstranslateintolowerhumancapital.Thus,intheory,thereis a direct effect from female education to income (or growth). There are also some solid arguments to support additional positive influences of female educationongrowthbeyondthisdirecteffect.Theseincludetheimpactonthe mother’shealth,thechild’shealthandeducation,andfertilityrates.Empirical data have, in general, supported the existence of these indirect effects. Higher female education makes women better-informed mothers and hence could contribute to lowering child mortality rates and malnutrition (Aly and Grabowski, 1990; Smith and Haddad, 1999; Knowles et al., 2002; Klasen, 2003). Increasing the proportion of educated women may also contribute to lowering fertility rates. In general, female education is negatively correlated to fertility and lower fertility levels are associated with lower dependency ratios. In turn, lower dependency ratios are associated with higher income
Their measure of gender inequality was the share of the adult female population for whom secondary education was the highest level attained, controlling for the share of the adult male population for whom some secondary education was the highest level attained.5 Along with standard growth
Klasen and Lamanna (2009) confirmed these earlier results using an updated dataset on educational achievements covering the time period 1960-2000 for 93 countries and re-estimating the direct and indirect impact of gender inequality in schooling, as well as the impact of gender inequality in employment, on growth. However, they found that the moderate to poor growth performance in SSA and Latin America in the 1990s for reasons not related to any trends in gender inequalities in education meant that the positive impact of declining gender inequality in education was much stronger when these regions were dropped from the estimation.
Esteve-Volart (2000)Her results supported the view that both an overall increase in education as well as reduction in gender inequality in primary education led to an increase in growth. An increase in male education would stimulate growth in so far as overall education levels increased but, unless accompanied by an equivalent increase in female education, would lead to an increase in gender inequality that would dampen its effects on growth

Baliamoune-Lutz and McGillivray (2007Their results suggested that while overall human capital had a positive impact on growth, gender inequality in literacy had a statistically significant negative effect which was robust to changes in specification. The interaction term suggested that the negative effect of gender inequality in literacy was even larger in Arab countries. The interaction between gender inequality in literacy rates and openness of trade had a positive effect, suggesting that some of the growth caused by greater openness to trade was being driven by the high proportion of uneducated women employed in export agriculture in the African context – and possibly export manufacturing in some of the non-oil producing Arab countries.

Knowles et al. (2002)They found that female education had a significant positive impact on GDP per worker, namely, a 1 per cent increase in female education would increase GDP per worker by 0.37 per cent, thereby contributing to higher labour productivity. Male education was generally weakly negative or else did not have a statistically significant positive effect, depending on the method of estimation and choice of variables included. These results held when sensitivity tests were carried out for the effect of influential/outlier variables as well as when measures were taken to allow for the possibility of simultaneity bias.
Brummet (2008). He suggests that the greater impact of primary education on growth in low-income countries ‘probably reflects the fact that literacy is especially important for indirect effects such as infant mortality or child education’ (Brummet 2008: 18), an interpretation consistent with the conclusions by Baliamoune-Lutz and McGillivray above.
Forbes (2000) studied the effect of male and female education on economic growth with a very similar model to Perotti (1996) and Caselli et al. (1996). He used various panel data estimation techniques for 45 countries for the period 1965-1995.14 In line with Caselli et al. (1996), he found that female education had a positive and significant impact while the impact of male education was negative, but not significant. It is worth pointing out at this stage that the negative coefficient for male education reported by a number of studies