This chapter examines gender inequality, focusing on two critical spheres in which gender inequality is generated: education and work. The objective is to provide a current snapshot of gender inequality across key indicators as well as a dynamic perspective that highlights successes and...

Literacy has been conceptualized traditionally as having a major role in developing a nation. Literacy helps to spread awareness among the people of their rights. People with good literacy skills enjoy a higher standard of living, have better opportunities of finding jobs, and are able to...

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru once said: “If you educate a man you educate an individual, however, if you educate a woman you educate a whole family. Women empowered means mother India empowered”. When women who contribute almost half of the population are empowered it will strengthen the national...

Two centuries ago, in most countries around the world, women were unable to vote, had no say over their own children or property, and could not obtain a divorce. Women have gradually gained rights in many areas of life, and this legal expansion has been closely intertwined with economic...

This study established the imperative for treating the human being in Africa as ‘human capital' and showing that countries that invested more in human capital development had better economic and human development prospects than the countries that do not. Using comparative analysis, it was...

China's rapid growth was fueled by substantial physical capital investments applied to a large stock of medium skilled labor acquired before economic reforms began. As development proceeded, the demand for high skilled labor has grown, and, in the past decade, China has made substantial...

This paper uses a historical setting to study when religion can be a barrier to the diffusion of knowledge and economic development, and through which mechanism. I focus on 19th-century Catholicism and analyze a crucial phase of modern economic growth, the Second Industrial Revolution...

This research explores the economic causes and consequences of language structures. It advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically that variations in pre-industrial geographical characteristics that were conducive to higher returns to agricultural investment, gender gaps in agricultural...