Estimating the Extent of Inequality in Access to Higher Education in Pakistan

Abstract

As the world's sixth most populous country in the world with youth as a major proportion of population, Pakistan is experiencing a drastic increase in demand for higher education. This warrants a study on Pakistan’s inequality in access to higher education. To measure the educational inequalities in Pakistan, the latest “Pakistan social and living standard survey” (PSLM) 2018-19 with 66,544 households’ individual information is used and the Donaldson–Weymark relative S-Gini is employed. Results reveal that the inequality in access to higher education is more severe among households with low levels of income. Specifically, for B40 households (bottom 40% income), the Gini value is found to be 0.7521 which is substantially higher than the 0.3913 of T20 households (top 20% income). The inequality level by gender shows a value of 0.5236 and 0.7451 for male and female respectively. The regional comparison shows that educational attainment is more unequal in rural areas as compared to urban areas, with Gini coefficients of 0.7109 and 0.5100, respectively. With the economic development of Pakistan shows positive progress and could provide more employment for the youth, ensuring equitable access to education, especially higher education is therefore crucial, and this warrants a drastic policy reform.

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