Gender and Social Inequality Challenges/Evidence Girls aged 11-17 are almost doubly deprived in school attainment, school attendance and the aggregated education dimension, than boys are (MODA) Overlaps between children aged 0-4 deprived in nutrition, water and housing are much larger for children living in rural areas (14 percent overlap of all three dimensions), than for children living in urban areas (1.9 percent overlap of all three dimensions) (MODA) In August 2016, 57% of children living in households with more than 10 members got ill (L2T, 2016) Estimates of the proportion of young people that may be “missing” out of official statistics vary between 17.9% and 65% (The National Program of Youth Social Development in the Republic of Tajikistan for 2016-2018) Households whose primary income comes from pensions or from daily wage labour are more likely to be severely food insecure than households with other main sources of income (FSMS, June 2016) As a region, East Asia and the Pacific reportedly loses between US$ 42 billion to US$ 47 billion annually due to women’s limited access to employment opportunities (ILO and ADB, Women and Labour Markets in Asia: Rebalancing for Gender Equality) Girls’ exclusion from education considerably hinders the productive potential of an economy and its overall development. In the East Asia and the Pacific region, specifically, it has been estimated that between US$16 billion to US$30 billion is lost annually as a result of gender gaps in education (Wilhelmson and Gerdtham, Impact on Economic Growth of Investing in Maternal and Newborn Health)

Gender and Social Inequality Investment gains Undernutrition costs Tajikistan US$ 41 million annually. These losses are caused by lost productivity due to increased mortality and reduced cognitive and physical development: Workforce lost to deaths from undernutrition costs the country US$ 12.3 million a year; productivity lost to stunting, iodine deficiency, childhood anemia and low birth weight costs US$ 28.6 million. (UNICEF and WB, 2012) The estimated future economic gains in productivity and workforce size, if nutrition intervention packages are scaled up, are US$ 15 million in Tajikistan. (UNICEF and WB, 2012) If all students in low-income countries left school with basic reading skills, 171 million people could be lifted out of poverty, which would be equivalent to a 12% cut in world poverty (Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2013/4) A simulation on increasing pre-school enrolment in 73 countries found benefits in terms of higher future wages of $6.4-$17.6 per dollar invested. The simulation indicated potential long-term benefits which range from $11 to $34 billion. UNICEF, 2016. Investing in girls so that they would complete the next level of education would lead to lifetime earnings of today's cohort of girls that is equivalent to up to 68 percent of annual Gross Domestic Product (World Bank) Recent estimates suggest that economic gender parity could add an additional US$240 billion to the GDP of the United Kingdom, US$1,201 billion to that of the United States, US$526 billion to Japan’s, and US$285 billion to the GDP of Germany (Women in Work Index 2016)