Three Essays on Human Capital Development in Bangladesh

This dissertation consists of three chapters on human capital development in Bangladesh. The first chapter provides microeconometric evidence that access to electricity has a positive impact on the nutritional status of children under five in rural Bangladesh. It further investigates the casual pathways and shows that the positive impact of electrification partially comes from increased wealth. Chapter 2 examines the intrahousehold gender gap in education expenditure. By constructing a three-part model, which decomposes the households’ education decisions into enrollment, conditional education expenditure and share of education expenditure allocated to the core items that are directly related to the quality of education, we find a pro-female bias in enrollment decision but a pro-male bias in the latter two decisions. We then study the role played by the Female Stipend Programs (FSPs) in explaining this apparent inconsistency of gender bias pattern. Chapter 3 experimentally studies the impact of a job training “plus” program in the ready-made garment (RMG) sector on female empowerment in northern Bangladesh. The treatment components include information, skill training, stipend and internship. The results obtained are mixed. We find that the training ``plus'' program tends to increase the women's social status and mobility and improve men's attitude towards gender equality. On the other hand, it tends to lower women's perception of female empowerment and weaken women's decision power. We also find that the estimated treatment effect change over time.