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on Education |
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Issue of 2005‒05‒07
fifteen papers chosen by Joao Carlos Correia Leitao Universidade da Beira Interior |
| By: | Lauren Zykorie (None) |
| Abstract: | In the past, the disabled student faced educational challenges. In 1970, before the enactment of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, only one in five students with disabilities received an education from American public schools. Despite the lack of cost-effectiveness in "consigning disabled children to 'terminal' care in an institution," stereotypes regarding disabled schoolchildren persistently prevented educating disabled students in public schools. Thus, in enacting the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 (EHA), later renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), Congress mandated an end to the long history of segregation, discrimination, and exclusion of children with disabilities in education. In advocating for the passage of the IDEA, Senator Hubert H. Humphrey (D-MN) argued "too often we keep children whom we regard as 'different' or a 'disturbing influence' out of our schools." Indeed, "special education and disabled children were often considered uneducable, disruptive, and their presence disturbing to children and adults in the school community." Congress intended the IDEA to be the vehicle for challenging these justifications for excluding students with disabilities. |
| Keywords: | Disabilities, Education, |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bep:conpil:uconn_cpilj-1005&r=edu |
| By: | Elisabeth Sadoulet (University of California, Berkeley); Alain de Janvry (University of California, Berkeley) |
| Abstract: | Using grants programs to induce poor parents to send their children to school has received considerable attention as an instrument to break the inheritance of poverty. Yet, the cost of these programs tends to be quite high so that increasing their efficiency is an important issue that needs to be researched. We use the educational component of Progresa in Mexico to explore alternative targeting and calibrating schemes to achieve this purpose. We show that targeting on risk of nonenrollment instead of targeting on poverty, as currently done, would be implementable and create huge efficiency gains. To start with, this would concentrate grants on secondary school since attendance to primary school is virtually universal, saving 55% of the educational budget. Targeting the population most likely to drop out of school upon completing primary and allowing for variable transfers across beneficiaries would result in a 72% efficiency gain for that cohort over targeting on poverty and making uniform transfers by gender, reducing leakage cost from 85% to 53% of the budget. Even restricting transfers to be uniform across beneficiaries but set at the optimal level would achieve a 65% efficiency gain. However, to make the scheme easy to implement, only observable, transparent, and non-manipulable indicators of risk should be used and discrete levels of transfers offered. This would still result in a 53% efficiency gain over the current scheme. |
| Keywords: | children, education, grants-in-aid, rural poverty, |
| Date: | 2003–07–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:agrebk:985&r=edu |
| By: | Elisabeth Sadoulet (University of California, Berkeley); Alain de Janvry (University of California, Berkeley) |
| Abstract: | Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programs have become extensively used to induce poor parents to increase their investments in the human capital of their children. The condition on school attendance and use of health facilities transforms the transfer into a price effect on the condition. Justification for the condition is to reduce market failures due to positive externalities from investments in human capital, while transferring money to the poor. To be efficient, CCT programs thus need to successfully implement three rules. The first is a rule to select the poor. The other two are rules of eligibility among the poor and of calibration of transfers, particularly if budgets are insufficient to offer large universal transfers to all the poor. Using the case of Progresa in Mexico, we show that efficiency gains can be achieved by taking into account the probability of enrollment of a child, and how it is expected to respond to a cash transfer. Calibration relies on heterogeneity in responses due to child, household, and community characteristics. Rules can be made easily implementable by selecting indicators that are simple, easily observable and verifiable, and that cannot be manipulated by beneficiaries. We show that, when programs operate under strong budgets constraints, major efficiency gains can indeed be achieved by careful design of eligibility and transfer rules. In the case under study, these efficiency gains can be achieved without equity costs on the poor. |
| Keywords: | education, government aid, human capital, investments, |
| Date: | 2004–06–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:agrebk:989&r=edu |
| By: | Semeijn,Judith, H.; Velden,Rolf,van der; Heijke,Hans; Vleuten,Cees,van der; Boshuizen,Henny, P.A. (ROA rm) |
| Abstract: | In this study, the effects of several educational and non-educational indicators of (aspects of) competence on short-term labour market outcomes for university graduates are estimated. The research question we address is: To what extent do indications of specific and generic competence during the educational program predict labour market outcomes? Labour market outcomes in this study pertain to employment chances and quality of the job (having a job, academic level, matching occupational domain and wages). We use data on specific and generic aspects of competence, all of which were assessed during the academic study course, i.e. test scores on the attainment of domain specific knowledge, scores on group functioning, and the Masters’ thesis result. In addition, some other indicators of human capital acquired outside education are used, i.e. relevant work experience and managerial experience. The results indicate a rather differentiated pattern for the value of specific and generic competence acquired during education for the labour market. |
| Keywords: | labour market entry and occupational careers; |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dgr:umaror:2005003&r=edu |
| By: | Yamauchi, Futoshi |
| Abstract: | "This paper uses recently available South African school census data from 1996 and 2000 to assess variations in educational quality across former population groups of public schools and dynamic changes in post-apartheid South Africa. The author argues that unless the government actively strengthens its support to former Black schools in allocating both budget and personnel, a vicious cycle of poverty and low-quality education will persist. The worry is that children who do not receive a sufficiently high quality of education are less likely to engage in regular employment and are more likely to suffer from low wages, potentially contributing to the long-term poverty trap." from Text |
| Keywords: | quality of education ,race ,apartheid , |
| Date: | 2004 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpr:fcndbr:182&r=edu |
| By: | Handa, Sudhanshu; Simler, Kenneth R.; Harrower, Sarah |
| Abstract: | "For the well-being of today's families and for future generations, how important is investment in education and other forms of human capital? This report analyzes the potential for investments in education by individual households, by government, and by donor agencies to reduce poverty in postwar Mozambique. It provides an assessment of the existing stock of human capital and examines the association between human capital and both monetary and nonmonetary dimensions of household welfare. It also explores the factors that influence the decision to send children to school, and how long children remain in school.The authors focus on human capital because of its importance in increasing labor productivity in poor countries, its contribution to poverty reduction as both a substitute for and complement to physical capital, and the role of education in determining poverty levels. Although the analysis was originally commissioned by the Government of Mozambique, in many respects the methods and findings are also applicable in other low-income countries." from Text |
| Keywords: | Human capital ,households ,Education ,School children , |
| Date: | 2004 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpr:resrep:134&r=edu |
| By: | Sandra E. Black; Paul J. Devereux; Kjell G. Salvanes |
| Abstract: | Parents with higher education levels have children with higher education levels. However, is this because parental education actually changes the outcomes of children, suggesting an important spillover of education policies, or is it merely that more able individuals who have higher education also have more able children? This paper proposes to answer this question by using a unique dataset from Norway. Using the reform of the education system that was implemented in different municipalities at different times in the 1960s as an instrument for parental education, we find little evidence of a causal relationship between parents’ education and children’s education, despite significant OLS relationships. We find 2SLS estimates that are consistently lower than the OLS estimates with the only statistically significant effect being a positive relationship between mother's education and son's education. These findings suggest that the high correlations between parents’ and children’s education are due primarily to family characteristics and inherited ability and not education spillovers. |
| JEL: | I21 J13 J24 |
| Date: | 2003–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ifs:cemmap:wp16/03&r=edu |
| By: | Miguel St. Aubyn; João Pereira |
| Abstract: | We decompose an annual average years of schooling series for Portugal into different schooling levels series. By estimating a number of vector autoregressions, we provide measures of aggregate and disaggregate economic growth impacts of different education levels. Increasing education at all levels except tertiary have a significant effect on growth. Investment in education does not significantly crowd out physical investment and average years of schooling semi-elasticities have comparable magnitude across primary and secondary levels. |
| Keywords: | Economic growth; education; human capital; Portugal. |
| JEL: | I21 O40 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ise:isegwp:wp132004&r=edu |
| By: | Dalton Conley; Rebecca Glauber |
| Abstract: | The stylized fact that individuals who come from families with more children are disadvantaged in the schooling process has been one of the most robust effects in human capital and stratification research over the last few decades. For example, Featherman and Hauser (1978: 242-243) estimate that each additional brother or sister costs respondents on the order of a fifth of a year of schooling. However, more recent analyses suggest that the detrimental effects of sibship size on children's educational achievement might be spurious. We extend these recent analyses of spuriousness versus causality using a different method and a different set of outcome measures. We suggest an instrumental variable approach to estimate the effect of sibship size on children's private school attendance and on their likelihood of being held back in school. Specifically, we deploy the sex-mix instrument used by Angrist and Evans (1998). Analyses of educational data from the 1990 PUMS five percent sample reveal that children from larger families are less likely to attend private school and are more likely to be held back in school. Our estimates are smaller than traditional OLS estimates, but are nevertheless greater than zero. Most interesting is the fact that the effect of sibship size is uniformly strongest for latter-born children and zero for first born children. |
| JEL: | I0 |
| Date: | 2005–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11302&r=edu |
| By: | Santiago Budria (University of Madeira & CEEAplA) |
| Abstract: | This article uses data from the 1998 European Union Household Panel to study economic inequality in Spain. It reports data on the Spanish distributions of income, labor income, and capital income, and on related features of inequality, such as age, employment status, educational attainment, and marital status. It also reports data on the income mobility of Spanish households. We find that income, earnings, and, very especially, capital income are very unequally in Spain. |
| Keywords: | Inequality, Income distribution, Labour earnings distribution, Capital income distribution |
| JEL: | J |
| Date: | 2005–05–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wpa:wuwpla:0505001&r=edu |
| By: | Mihails Hazans (Baltic International Centre for Economic Policy Studies BICEPS); Olga Rastrigina (CEU); Ija Trapeznikova (North- Western University) |
| Abstract: | Parental education is found to have a strong positive effect on propensity to enroll in and complete secondary and tertiary education, both in Soviet times and during transition, but mother’s education effect have been weakening. A human capital gap between titular ethnicities and Russian speaking minorities has emerged in all three countries and remains significant after controlling for parental education. In Estonia and Latvia, ethnic gap in secondary enrollment reinforces inequality of human capital distribution between ethnicities. The unexplained ethnic gap in tertiary attainment has been declining in Lithuania (despite absence of Russian language higher education) but widening in Latvia. |
| Keywords: | Parental education; ethnic minorities; transition |
| JEL: | J24 J15 P51 |
| Date: | 2005–05–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wpa:wuwpla:0505002&r=edu |
| By: | Ronald Mincy (Columbia University); Shoshana Grossbard (San Diego State University); Chien-Chung Huang (Rutgers University) |
| Abstract: | This paper sheds light on the determinants of choice between four co- parenting arrangements: father absence, father’s non-residential visitations, cohabitation, and marriage. In our theoretical framework, we use an adaptation of Becker’s Demand & Supply (D&S) model of marriage and a hierarchy of co-parenting arrangements--ranked in terms of degree of fathers’ involvement in the lives of mother or child--as an observable price measure for women’s work as mothers. We predict effects on co-parenting choice of factors such as welfare benefits, sex ratios, income, black versus white, or education, and black/white differences in these effects. We test our predictions with data from the Fragile Families and Child-Wellbeing Survey. Our findings include (1) the larger the grant amount in the state where the mother resides, the more it is likely that fathers will have some contact with their children, and the more it is likely that fathers will cohabit with the mothers; (2) fathers who have more children with other women are less likely to have contact with a given woman’s children, but this discouraging effect of men’s other children is smaller for blacks than for whites; and (3) employment in the last year reduces the likelihood that a white mother is married to her child’s father, while increasing that likelihood among black mothers. |
| JEL: | J |
| Date: | 2005–05–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wpa:wuwpla:0505004&r=edu |
| By: | Ricardo Martin (World Bank); Alex Segura-Ubiergo (International Monetary Fund) |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes the impact of IMF-supported programs on health and education spending in a large time-series cross-section sample of countries. Using an ARIMA model to model time dynamics and instrumental variables to correct for the well-known endogeneity of IMF-supported programs, the paper finds, contrary to the conventional wisdom, that health and education do not decline in the presence of an IMF-supported program. However, this does not necessarily mean that the poor are protected from the costs of economic adjustment. |
| Keywords: | social spending, IMF-supported programs, health, education |
| JEL: | D6 D7 H |
| Date: | 2005–04–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wpa:wuwppe:0504011&r=edu |
| By: | Talat Mahmood; Sara Geerdes; Klaus Schömann |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the chances for immigrants on the European job market. The data represents a one percent sample of the German population of the Micro census for the years 1998, 2000 and 2003 and Eurostat Labour Force Survey data. The issue addressed is how the academic and occupational level of education (participation in education), labour participation, professional status, unemployment rate, income, female labour participation and atypical occupation (structure of employment) of the foreigners differ from the native population. We find that foreigners in EU countries are more likely to be unemployed and are often in lower segments of the labour market. European comparisons of the labour market situation shows that the acknowledgment of foreign degrees, discrimination, supporting measures and the labour market policy have to be taken into account, as well as the (country-specific) human capital, language skills and the immigrants’ participation in education. <br> <br> <i>ZUSAMMENFASSUNG - (Arbeitsplatzangebot in Europa - Chancen für Immigranten?) <br> Mithilfe des Mikrozensus 1998, 2000 und 2000 und dem Eurostat Labour Force Survey werden die Möglichkeiten für Immigranten auf dem europäischen Arbeitsmarkt untersucht. Es wird das akademische und berufliche Ausbildungsniveau (Bildungsbeteiligung), die Erwerbsbeteiligung, die Stellung im Beruf, die Arbeitslosenrate, das Einkommen, die Frauenerwerbsquote und atypische Beschäftigung (Beschäftigungsstruktur) von Einheimischen und Migranten verglichen. Es zeigt sich, dass EU Ausländer eher arbeitslos sind und sich eher in niedrigeren Segmenten des Arbeitsmarkts befinden. Der europäische Vergleich der Arbeitsmarktsituation Mithilfe des Mikrozensus 1998, 2000 und 2000 und dem Eurostat Labour Force Survey werden die Möglichkeiten für Immigranten auf dem europäischen Arbeitsmarkt untersucht. Es wird das akademische und berufliche Ausbildungsniveau (Bildungsbeteiligung), die Erwerbsbeteiligung, die Stellung im Beruf, die Arbeitslosenrate, das Einkommen, die Frauenerwerbsquote und atypische Beschäftigung (Beschäftigungsstruktur) von Einheimischen und Migranten verglichen. Es zeigt sich, dass EU Ausländer eher arbeitslos sind und sich eher in niedrigeren Segmenten des Arbeitsmarkts befinden. Der europäische Vergleich der Arbeitsmarktsituation zeigt, dass sowohl die Anerkennung ausländischer Bildungsabschlusse, Diskriminierung, die Hilfsmanahmen und die Arbeitsmarktpolitik als auch das (landesspezifische) Humankapital, Sprachkenntnisse und die Bildungsbeteiligung zu berücksichtigen sind, zeigt, dass sowohl die Anerkennung ausländischer Bildungsabschlüsse, Diskriminierung, die Hilfsmanahmen und die Arbeitsmarktpolitik als auch das (landesspezifische) Humankapital, Sprachkenntnisse und die Bildungsbeteiligung zu berücksichtigen sind.</i> |
| Keywords: | International migration, European job market, Immigrants |
| JEL: | C35 F22 J61 |
| Date: | 2005–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wzb:wzebiv:spii2005-07&r=edu |
| By: | Harold Alderman (World Bank); John Hoddinott (International Food Policy Research Institute); Bill Kinsey (University of Zimbabwe and Free University, Amsterdam) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the impact of preschool malnutrition on subsequent human capital formation in rural Zimbabwe using a maternal fixed effects - instrumental variables (MFE-IV) estimator with a long term panel data set. Representations of civil war and drought “shocks” are used to identify differences in preschool nutritional status across siblings. Improvements in height-for-age in preschoolers are associated with increased height as a young adult and number of grades of schooling completed. Had the median pre-school child in this sample had the stature of a median child in a developed country, by adolescence, she would be 3.4 centimeters taller, had completed an additional 0.85 grades of schooling and would have commenced school six months earlier. |
| Keywords: | health, education, shocks, Zimbabwe |
| JEL: | I12 I20 O15 |
| Date: | 2004–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hic:wpaper:09&r=edu |