Bihar – Girls Bicycle Education Scheme
Can giving free bikes get more girls to stay in school? The Bihar Girls Bicycle Education Scheme in India was sponsored by researchers, Karthik Muralidharan (University of California, San Diego) and Nishith Prakash (University of Connecticut), who investigated the effect of providing every schoolgirl aged 14 in Bihar with a bike.
The Results
The results of this bicycle program, launched in 2006, were impressive and immediate. It increased girls’ age-appropriate enrollment in secondary school by 30 percent and reduced the gender gap in age-appropriate secondary school enrollment by 40 percent (Muralidharan and Prakash, 2013). Most significant for me were two main aspects: first, it was undertaken in the poorest, most destitute state in India and second, the scale of the program, which was massive to say the least. Both these aspects make the project not only unique, but seminal, as it sets a precedence for future work to undertaken now that the location and volume have been shown not be to a hinderance in rolling out such programs.
From research to videos
To find out more about the research behind the 6 minute video Moving up a gear (below), you can read: Cycling to school: Increasing high school enrollment for girls in Bihar
Muralidharan and Prakash have since create a second follow-up video: Moving Up A Gear: Update. which provides extra information and a update.
To further explain their approaches, there is a number of papers that have been published to explain the research that provides analysis and monitoring for this scheme – as well as other documentation where the main research is more fully explained.