Poverty and Education
There is a very close relationship between poverty and the access to education, especially to high quality education in developing countries. Any developing country which is implementing a strategy to enhance education and other skills for the betterment of the working or poor class needs to take poverty into account. It is a reality that poverty plays a major role in the lack of educational standards.
A very common trend in developing countries is that, usually, females receive less education than their male counterparts. As compared to developed countries the standard of education is lower and not accessible to all in the underdeveloped countries. Lack of education in the female population depends on various aspects like the financial conditions, social and cultural norms and many other prevalent trends. Men are considered to be the bread earners; therefore, it is preferred to provide them with education at the cost of sacrificing the educational needs of the female members of the society.
Many researches on the subject of constraints on girl's schooling are related with poverty along with other aspects like girls are supposed to help their mothers with the household chores. They are supposed to do all kinds of work like cooking, washing, cleaning and even looking after the younger siblings. Therefore girl labour cannot be sacrificed for the long hours being spent at schools and it will keep them away from understanding household management, which they are supposed to do after marriage. It is considered to be a loss of resources for the schooling of girls with respect to the lower wage rate for female workers in many parts of the world. The social and cultural traditions assume the fact that daughters are expected to leave the house upon marriage, or females are supposed to stay at home for their honour and for household reasons.
There are some other major constraints to girls' schooling like the concerns about girls' safety both in school and during travel towards school, especially during their late teens. It is also considered to be a high risk for the honour and dignity of the concerned family, if girls become more active in immoral activities outside home in the lower class.
There are several theories being presented to tackle the issues of education, poverty and gender bias including reducing opportunity costs to girls' schooling. Generally, the debate about the benefits of education is relative to economic growth of individuals and of the country by most of the experts. It has not been clearly assumed as to what kind of outcome could be created by education and the skills useful for the facilitation of higher levels of productivity amongst those who possess them in comparison to those who do not.
The Human Capital concepts being presented by the theorists assert different ideal situations due to the spread of education. Firstly, it is possible to deduce logically proved evidence about the income of the working people in relation to their received level of education. If we use the 'normal' assumptions of competitive labour and goods markets, it follows that the people with higher education seem to, on average, receives a higher level of productivity.
On another level the earnings are correlated with age, as people with more experience have a greater chance of getting a higher level of income. It is a common observable phenomenon that people with less or even no education at all tend to have a lower income level in their entire lives. These trends in the capitalistic market tend to indicate that education is able to make people more productive as the learning ability is being enhanced by it, enabling them to understand the situation, make right decisions and to market themselves in a much better way.