Granger causality between growth and women's education

Here's a little evidence from Burkina Faso on the Granger causality between per capita economic growth and women's education, or to put it another way, whether economic growth happens first or women's education happens first. The examination contributes a little to the question of whether women's rights are to any extent a product of capitalist expansion directly or whether women's rights are the product of social changes generated outside of capitalism, in the sense of not being the result of demands by profit maximising companies. The latter interpretation does not exclude the possibility that the social changes have been enabled by capitalist social structure changes.

Two models are empirically tested. Estimation 1 is

Growth in a country =
constant1
+ constant2 * growth in a country some time ago
+ constant3 * women in primary education as a percentage of total people in primary education the same time ago
+ error

and estimation 2 is

Percentage of women in primary education =
constant4
+ constant5 * percentage of women in primary education some time ago
+ constant6 * growth in a country the same time ago
+ error

If growth has a positive effect on women's participation in education, then the constant6 will be positive, and conversely if it is negative. If the evidence is weak, then constant6 will be insignificant, that is, estimated with much uncertainty in the results. If women's participation has a positive effect on growth, similar statements apply to constant3.

I focussed on Burkina Faso because it has increased its women's participation in education from 36.9 percent in 1980 to 42.2 percent in 2002, so has some variation in its figures allowing for more precision in estimation. Western countries generally have had constant levels over the same period, and data was not available from the sources used (annual 1980-2002, from the UN and Penn World Tables) over earlier periods. A larger number of countries could have been used, but would have increased the time for data preparation. Burkina Faso also has avoided very severe social and economic dislocation during the period under consideration, which would distort the data.

OLS estimation was used, which is consistent for large amounts of data; we have 22 years worth, so the results should be reasonably accurate.

For estimation 1, constant3 is positive over all time lags. The first significant coefficient comes at time lag 6, when both constant2 and constant3 are significant at ten percent. A delay for the effect of increased female educational participation on growth to be evident would be expected. Thus, per capita growth appears to be positively associated with earlier increased female educational participation in Burkina Faso.

For estimation 2, constant6 varies between positive and negative signs depending on the time lag, and never comes near to significance at ten percent. Thus, economic growth does not seem be associated with future increased female participation in education in Burkina Faso, and increased participation seems likely to have been caused by other reasons. The results suggest that pure economic growth considerations - which may proxy for corporate profitability - have not influenced women's participation to any great extent in the country.

The results are an indication of the degree of influence capitalism exerts in Burkina Faso, and the importance of other social factors in effecting a major change in policy. Burkina Faso is still a pre-capitalist society to a great extent, and it would interesting to see whether the results translate to other countries and different measures of women's equality, and in particular to more capitalist societies. It would be surprising if economic growth seems to exert no influence on women's equality, since capitalist development is clearly a huge influence on society and possibly the principal one. If it is not significant, then the question arises of what social influences have been significant enough to effect apparently large changes in women's social participation over a very brief historical period.