2、Educating girls quite possibly achieves a higher rate of return than other investment available in the developing world. Women’s education may be unusual territory for economists, but strengthening women’s contribution to development is actually as much an economic as a social issue. And economics, with its stress on encouragement, provides guidepost that point to an explanation for why so many girls are kept away from an education.

Parents in low – income countries fail to invest in their daughters because they do not expect them to make an economic contribution to the family: girls grow up only to marry into somebody else’s family and bear children. Girls are therefore seen as less valuable than boys and are kept at home to do housework while their brothers are sent to school – the prophecy (預(yù)言) becomes self – fulfilling, trapping women in a vicious circle of discrimination.

An educated mother, on the other hand, has greater earning abilities outside the home and faces an entirely different set of choices. She is likely to have fewer but healthier children and can insist on the development of all her children, ensuring that her daughters are given a fair chance. The education of her daughters then makes it much more likely that the next generation of girls as well as of boys, will be educated and healthy. The vicious circle is therefore transformed into a righteous circle.

Few will deny that educating has great social benefits. But it has great economic advantages as well. Most obviously, there is the direct effect of education on the wages of female workers. Wages rise by 10 to 20 per cent for each additional year of schooling. Such big returns are impressive by the standard of other available investments, but they are just the beginning. Educating women also has a significant effect on health practices including birth rate control.

1．Find in the passage a word opposite in meaning to the underlined word “vicious”.

2．What belief does a majority of poor parents in developing countries hold about educating girls? (回答詞數(shù)不超過(guò)6個(gè))

3．What is the reason for girls’ being educated according to the author? (回答詞數(shù)不超過(guò)8個(gè))