南亚的机会不平等：没有消费收益的教育收益之谜

Inequality of Opportunity in South Asia The Puzzle of Educational GainsWithout Consumption Gains Maurizio BussoloVito PeragineFabian Reutzel South Asia RegionOffice of the Chief EconomistMay 2026Public Disclosure Authorized A verified reproducibility package for this paper isavailable athttp://reproducibility.worldbank.org,clickherefor direct access. Policy Research Working Paper11395 Abstract More than two decades of sustained economic growth inSouth Asia brought significant reductions in poverty, yetinclusive social progress has remained elusive. Using a pseu-do-panel approach with a large-scale harmonized dataset of20 million observations across seven South Asian countries,this paper traces the evolution of inequality of opportunityacross cohorts born between 1950s and 1990s for three out-comes: education, labor markets, and consumption. Thefindings show substantial improvements in educationalopportunities and unchanging high levels of inequality of opportunity in consumption. Three mechanisms explainthis divergence. First, educational expansion focused onbasic schooling for the 1950s to 1980s cohorts—a skilllevel with limited labor market returns. Second, despitenarrowing gender gaps in educational attainment, femalelabor force participation remains stubbornly low acrosscohorts. Third, even among equally educated individuals,circumstances continue to predict labor outcomes, suggest-ing persistent structural barriers to labor market access andfair rewards. This paper is a product of the Office of the Chief Economist, South Asia Region. It is part of a larger effort by the WorldBank to provide open access to its research and make a contribution to development policy discussions around the world.Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at http://www.worldbank.org/prwp. The authors may becontacted mbussolo@worldbank.org, fabian.reutzel@psemail.eu,vitorocco.peragine@uniba.it. A verified reproducibilitypackage for this paper is available athttp://reproducibility.worldbank.org, clickherefor direct access. The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about developmentissues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry thenames of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely thoseof the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank andits affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent. Inequality of Opportunity in South Asia:The Puzzle of Educational Gains WithoutConsumption Gains Maurizio Bussolo∗Vito Peragine†Fabian Reutzel‡ JEL Codes: D63; O15; I25; I24Keywords: Inequality of Opportunity; Economic Development; Educational expansion 1Introduction The South Asia region has achieved substantial progress in poverty reduction, driven byrobust and sustained economic expansion. Extreme poverty, measured at$2.15 per day(2017 PPP), fell dramatically from 536 million in 1990 to 191 million in 2019 (World Bank,2022).Yet despite this remarkable economic success, South Asia records the highestglobal demand for income redistribution—a preference that has increased sharply sincethe 1990s (World Bank, 2023b, World Values Survey).This contrast of growth andpoverty reduction alongside rising demands for redistribution suggests that the benefitsof economic progress have not been distributed equally across the population, raisingfundamental questions about inequality of opportunity.Beyond equity concerns, inequality of opportunity imposes substantial efficiency costs on South Asian economies. With only one-third of working-age women participating in thelabor force—one of the lowest rates globally and well below the emerging market averageof 54 percent—the region faces a costly misallocation of human resources. World Bank(2024b) estimates that raising female labor force participation to male rates could boostper capita incomes in South Asia by up to one-half in the long term, through increasedlabor supply, capital accumulation, and productivity gains. If South Asian countries areto achieve their ambitious development goals of reaching higher income levels, addressinginequality of opportunity—particularly the structural barriers that exclude women fromproductive employment despite their educational gains—becomes not merely a matter offairness but economic necessity.Recent global evidence confirms the severity of South Asia’s opportunity deficit. Van der Weide et al. (2024), constructing a global database on intergenerational mobility from153 countries, show that South Asia exhibits among the world’s lowest levels of educa-tional mobility, with 13 of the 15 globally least mobile countries located in Africa