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.
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.
I was looking at research from America, trying to get a sense of how many high school students cycle to school. I found a small, but very interesting study from Davis, California. It specifically looked at what are the major dis/encouragements for high school students in relation to biking to school.
Source: Solar Napper Commuter Information
Problem: The dwindling number of students who actively travel to school is a logical growing concern in the US. The article states that in 1969, 87% of all trips less than 1.6kms to school were on bike or foot, whereas in 2001, less than 1% of students aged 5-15 were biking to school. The authors are bold enough to argue that such travel habit changes – which once initiated in childhood, are continued into adulthood; have a direct negative impact on wider social issues such as the national obesity rates and climate change.
Response: To try and combat low active travel to school, a US Federal Initiative called ‘Safe Routes to School,’ was implemented in 2005, at a cost of US$612 million to help promote safe walking and bike access to schools. Since then, a number of studies have assessed the results and effectiveness – and these are the studies I have been looking at this week.
This study caught my eye for a few key reasons. Firstly, it specifically focused on high school students (AU years 10-12), whereas most other US research on active student mobility concentrates on junior high (years 7-9) students. Secondly, this research solely looked at biking, as opposed to most others, which considered walking and biking together.
Source: saferouteswa.org
Findings: Here are a few highlights of interest from this Study.
Gender: Overall, more male students ride than female students.
Age: Cycling to school rates decreased with (increased) age and grade levels – meaning the older you get and the higher your grade level, you ride less to school.
License: Getting a drivers license cuts the already low cycling rate in half again.
Riders: Those who do ride to school, often use their bike to ride to many places regularly, not just school.
Compound factors: Being female, having access to a car and having a drivers license, had the biggest impact on lowering cycling results.
Convenience: Many students said that they used a car not a bike as they left campus for lunch and needed to be back in time for afternoon classes (from what little I know about US high school canteens, I wouldn’t eat there either!)
Portability: Carrying books and school gear was highlighted as a major issue for students who said that transporting ‘stuff’ to and from school was a significant consideration for biking or not.
Parental Influence: Parents had a greater influence on cycling choices than peers, but this is not surprising as parents provide an access choice for non-biking by readily chauffeuring or allowing licensed students to use family cars.
Most surprising finding: For me the most surprising comment was that there was a link between parental education levels and the likelihood of bicycling to school. The authors observed that ‘having a parent with at least a bachelor degree increased the odds of bicycling, most likely reflecting both high education levels and high bicycle commuting levels among parents who work at the university’ (p.76). I found this very interesting, as I had never stopped to fully consider a link between cycling and educational levels and have not found other studies that have claimed such a connection either. I will keep an eye on the literature and see if this is echoed elsewhere.
Is there a connection between higher education levels and cycling?
Emond, C. R., & Handy, S. L. (2012). Factors associated with bicycling to high school: Insights from Davis, CA. Journal of Transport Geography, 20(1), 71-79. doi:10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2011.07.008
