Replication data for: Cycling to School: Increasing Secondary School Enrollment for Girls in India

We study the impact of an innovative program in the Indian state of Bihar that aimed to reduce the gender gap in secondary school enrollment by providing girls who continued to secondary school with a bicycle that would improve access to school. Using data from a large representative household survey, we employ a triple difference approach (using boys and the neighboring state of Jharkhand as comparison groups) and find that being in a cohort that was exposed to the Cycle program increased girls' age-appropriate enrollment in secondary school by 32 percent and reduced the corresponding gender gap by 40 percent. We also find an 18 percent increase in the number of girls who appear for the high-stakes secondary school certificate exam, and a 12 percent increase in the number of girls who pass it. Parametric and non-parametric decompositions of the triple- difference estimate as a function of distance to the nearest secondary school show that the increases in enrollment mostly took place in villages that were further away from a secondary school, suggesting that the mechanism of impact was the reduction in the time and safety cost of school attendance made possible by the bicycle. We also find that the Cycle program was much more cost effective at increasing girls' secondary school enrollment than comparable conditional cash transfer programs in South Asia.

本研究聚焦印度比哈尔邦一项创新性政策项目的实施效果，该项目旨在通过为升入中学的女生提供自行车以改善其就学通达性，从而缩小中学入学率的性别差距。本研究依托大型代表性家庭调查数据，采用三重差分法（以男性学生及邻近的贾坎德邦作为对照组），研究发现：接触自行车项目的同期群女生的中学适龄入学率提升了32%，相应的性别差距缩小了40%。研究同时发现，报名参加高风险中学毕业会考的女生人数增长了18%，通过该考试的女生人数增长了12%。基于到最近中学的距离对三重差分估计结果进行参数化与非参数化分解后可见，入学率的提升主要集中在距离中学较远的村庄，这表明项目的作用机制在于自行车降低了就学的时间成本与安全成本。此外，相较于南亚地区同类条件现金转移支付项目，本自行车项目在提升女生中学入学率方面具备更高的成本效益。