Cycling to School: Increasing Secondary School Enrollment for Girls in India

An innovative program in the Indian state of Bihar was introduced that aimed to reduce the gender gap in secondary school enrollment by providing girls who continued to secondary school with a bicycle that would improve access to school. Using data from a large representative household survey, a triple difference approach is employed (using boys and the neighboring state of Jharkhand as comparison groups) and find that being in a cohort that was exposed to the Cycle program increased girls' age-appropriate enrollment in secondary school by 30% and also reduced the gender gap in age-appropriate secondary school enrollment by 40%. [BREAD Working Paper No. 397].