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（Bihar）一项旨在缩小中学入学率性别差距的创新项目：该项目为升入中学的女童提供自行车，以改善其就学可达性。本研究依托大型代表性家庭调查数据，采用三重差分法（triple difference approach，以男生及邻邦贾坎德邦（Jharkhand）作为对照群），研究发现：接触自行车项目的同期队列女童，其适龄中学入学率提升了32%，相应的性别差距缩小了40%。本研究同时发现，参加高利害中学毕业会考的女童人数增长了18%，考试通过的女童人数增长了12%。通过对三重差分估计值按到最近中学的距离进行参数化与非参数化分解，本研究发现入学率的提升主要集中在距离中学较远的村庄，这表明项目的影响机制为：自行车降低了女童就学的时间成本与安全成本。本研究还发现，相较于南亚地区同类有条件现金转移支付项目（conditional cash transfer programs），自行车项目在提升女童中学入学率方面具备更高的成本效益。