Education – especially of our state’s women – is a fundamental strategy in breaking the cycle of poverty and achieving economic security for families in Arkansas. A woman’s lack of knowledge of the importance of a healthy diet, basic health care and provision of a stimulating environment for her children lowers each child’s ability to learn for the rest of that child’s life; and, poor, uneducated children are more likely to grow up to be poor, uneducated adults. Conversely, an educated woman improves her chances of moving out of poverty, of participating in the labor market and of entering the workforce.
The Women’s Foundation of Arkansas’s (WFA) recent report “Our Common Journey: the Economics of Educating Women” offers clear examples of this phenomenon:
In 2012, only 4% of children of mothers with bachelor’s degrees were living in poverty, in comparison to 53% of children of high school dropouts and 31% for those whose mothers completed high school but nothing more. In addition, children’s own high school completion years later was related to their mothers’ education level. Forty percent of children whose mothers did not complete high school did not graduate high school on time (that is, by age 19) in comparison to only 2% of children whose mothers had bachelor’s degrees.
A focus on the educational and economic lives of women and girls is justified because improvements in their lives have the potential for exponential returns to the state of Arkansas in the form of children’s educational and economic success as adults. Thirty-eight percent of Arkansas children lived in single parent households in 2012 with approximately 80% of these households headed by women. These demographic realities, coupled with the alarmingly low education levels of Arkansas residents, mean a focus on women’s education is a crucial strategy in improving the lives of all Arkansas. When women advance economically, Arkansas is improved as a state.
The economic impact of educating the state’s women and girls cannot be overlooked. The more education a woman obtains, the greater her ability not only to be employed but to be employed at a family-sustaining wage. When women have greater employment prospects and higher wages, state governments save on expenditures on public support programs, while at the same time seeing increased tax revenue. The WFA report, “Our Common Journey,” identifies measures that would help women remain in school and complete their education and training:
Improving women’s and girls’ access to higher education, and improving their share of the kind of education (STEM) that is most valuable in the labor market, is an important strategy for improving women’s economic self-sufficiency, but by itself, this strategy is incomplete. A holistic strategy would include considerations of gender differences in family and labor market experiences. Establishing a paid parental leave for parents, as has been done in California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island, would assist mothers with their ability to remain employed across the birth of a child, a benefit with particular payoff among single mothers. The provision of paid sick leave to employee – and the removal of the traditional probationary period prior to sick leave availability – would also improve women’s ability to remain in the labor market. Increasing the availability and affordability of child care is also crucial to women’s abilities to remain stably employed. This is especially true of low-income women.
Improving higher education attainment, as well as increasing women’s share of STEM education, will improve the lives of state residents at every point in the life cycle. Higher education among women will mean improved birth outcomes, more students attainting grad-level proficiency in essential academic subjects, higher educational attainment among youth, which in turn means higher waged employment among adults. Indeed, when women win, we all win.
The Women’s Foundation of Arkansas is the only foundation focused solely on women and girls. Since its inception in 1998, the WFA has focused on increasing the economic security of Arkansas’ women through strategic grant-making, research and report writing and its Girls of Promise program.
