228 Pay Attention to Girl’s Education
228 关注女孩教育
Educating girls quite possibly yields a higher rate of return than any other investment available in the developing world. Women's education may be unusual territory for economists, but enhancing women's contribution to development is actually as much an economic as a social issue. And economics, with its emphasis on incentives, provides guideposts that point to an explanation for why so many girls are deprived of an education.
在发展中国家，女孩教育比其他任何可做的投资都能得到更高的收益。对经济学家来说，妇女教育可能是不同寻常的领域，但是加强女性教育对于发展的贡献就如同经济发展对社会的作用一样．经济学强调一种激励，它给我们提供了指南。其中解释了为什么会有那么多的女孩被剥夺受教育的权利。
Parents in low-income countries fail to invest in their daughters because they do not expect them to make an economic contribution to the family: girls grow up only to marry into somebody else's family and bear children. Girls are thus seen as less valuable than boys and art kept at home to do housework while their brothers are sent to school-the prophecy becomes self-fulfilling, trapping women in a vicious circle of neglect.
低收入国家的父母不给女儿做投资，是因为他们不指望女儿会给家庭带来经济贡献：女孩长大后只会嫁到别人家里，生养孩子。因此，人们都认为女孩不如男孩有价值，所以当她们的哥哥弟弟被送去上学时，她们却被留在家里干家务，由此，预言也就顺理成章地成为现实，并使女性陷入被忽视的恶性循环中。
An educated mother, on the other hand, has greater earning abilities outside the home and faces an entirely different set of choices. She is likely to have fewer but healthier children and can insist on the development of all her children, ensuring that her daughters are given a fair chance. The education of her daughters then makes it much more likely that the next generation of girls, as well as of boys, will be educated and healthy. The vicious circle is thus transformed into a virtuous circle.
然而从另一个方面来看，一位受过良好教育的母亲在外、面可以赚更多的钱，而且还面对著完全不同的选择机会。有可能她的孩子会相对比较少，但却会更健康，而且她会坚持培养自己所有的孩子，这就保证了她的女儿也会有平等的机会。她女儿所受到的教育会更有可能使下一代——不论是男孩还是女孩，都能受到教育而且健康成长。因此，恶性循环就可以转变为良性循环。
Few will dispute that educating women has great social benefits. But it has enormous economic advantages as well. Most obviously, there is the direct effect of education on the wages of female workers. Wages rise by 10 to 20 per cent for each additional year of schooling. Such big returns are impressive by the standard of other available investments, but they are just the beginning. Educating women also has a significant impact on health practices, including family planning.
几乎没人会怀疑女性教育能带来巨大的社会效应。然而其实它还可以带来巨大的经济效应，最明显的就是，教育对女性工人的工资会有直接的影响。每多一年教育，工资就会上涨10%至20%。根据其他可行的投资而设立的标准看来，变种巨大的收益是非常诱人的，但这还仅仅是个开始。女性教育对于卫生条例也会有重要的影响，其中包括计划生育。