Changing returns
. Starting from the early 1980s,
empirical evidence emerged that when returns
to women’s education increased, so did parental
investments in the schooling of girls. These early
studies showed that changes in the agriculture
technology that increased the returns to female
education also led parents to invest more in girls’
schooling. A new generation of work brings together globalization and returns to education in
the context of changing technologies.
The rise of outsourcing in India is offering new work opportunities—particularly for
women. The opening of a new information-
technology-enabled service (ITES) center, for
example, increased the number of children
enrolled in a primary school by 5.7 percent,with the increase driven primarily by higher
enrollments in English-language schools. This increased enrollment was equally large for boys
and girls, reflecting very local information markets on the returns to education.