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on Education |
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Issue of 2010‒10‒30
eleven papers chosen by Joao Carlos Correia Leitao University of Beira Interior and Technical University of Lisbon |
| By: | Milu Muyanga; John Olwande; Esther Mueni; Stella Wambugu |
| Abstract: | This paper attempts to evaluate the impact of the free primary education programme in Kenya, which is based on the premise that government intervention can lead to enhanced access to education especially by children from poor parental backgrounds. Primary education system in Kenya has been characterised by high wastage in form of low enrolment, high dropout rates, grade repetition as well as poor transition from primary to secondary schools. This scenario was attributed to high cost of primary education. To reverse these poor trends in educational achievements, the government initiated free primary education programme in January 2003. This paper therefore analyzes the impact of the FPE programme using panel data. Results indicate primary school enrolment rate has improved especially for children hailing from higher income categories; an indication that factors that prevent children from poor backgrounds from attending primary school go beyond the inability to pay school fees. Grade progression in primary schools has slightly dwindled. The results also indicate that there still exist constraints hindering children from poorer households from transiting to secondary school. The free primary education programme was found to be progressive, with the relatively poorer households drawing more benefits from the subsidy. |
| Keywords: | Primary education, Programme evaluation, Propensity score, benefit incidence analysis, Kenya |
| JEL: | I20 I21 I22 |
| Date: | 2010 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lvl:pmmacr:2010-08&r=edu |
| By: | Pedro Carneiro; James J. Heckman; Edward J. Vytlacil |
| Abstract: | This paper estimates the marginal returns to college for individuals induced to enroll in college by different marginal policy changes. The recent instrumental variables literature seeks to estimate this parameter, but in general it does so only under strong assumptions that are tested and found wanting. We show how to utilize economic theory and local instrumental variables estimators to estimate the effect of marginal policy changes. Our empirical analysis shows that returns are higher for individuals with values of unobservables that make them more likely to attend college. We contrast the returns to well-defined marginal policy changes with IV estimates of the return to schooling. Some marginal policy changes inducing students into college produce very low returns. |
| JEL: | J31 |
| Date: | 2010–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:16474&r=edu |
| By: | Antonio Di Paolo (Departament d'Economia Aplicada, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Campus de Bellaterra, Edifici B 08193 Bellaterra (Cerdanyola), Spain & IEB, Barcelona, Spain); José Luís Raymond (Departament d'Economia Aplicada, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Campus de Bellaterra, Edifici B 08193 Bellaterra (Cerdanyola), Spain & IEB, Barcelona, Spain); Jorge Calero (Departament d'Economia Política i Hisenda Pública, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain & IEB, Barcelona, Spain) |
| Abstract: | This paper is concerned with the investigation of the intergenerational mobility of education in several European countries and its changes across birth cohorts (1940-1980) using a new mobility index that considers the total degree of mobility as the weighted sum of mobility with respect to both parents. Moreover, this mobility index enables the analysis of the role of family characteristics as mediating factors in the statistical association between individual and parental education. We find that Nordic countries display lower levels of educational persistence but that the degree of mobility increases over time only in those countries with low initial levels. Moreover, the results suggest that the degree of mobility with respect to fathers and mothers converges to the same level and that family characteristics account for an important part of the statistical association between parental education and children’s schooling; a particular finding is that the most important elements of family characteristics are the family’s socio-economic status and educational assortative mating of the parents. |
| Keywords: | Educational Economics, Intergenerational Mobility, Europe, Birth Cohorts, Family |
| JEL: | J62 I21 I29 D13 |
| Date: | 2010–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:xrp:wpaper:xreap2010-11&r=edu |
| By: | Antonio Di Paolo (Departament d'Economia Aplicada, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Campus de Bellaterra, Edifici B 08193 Bellaterra (Cerdanyola), Spain. Institut d’Economia de Barcelona (IEB), Universitat de Barcelona) |
| Abstract: | Drawing on data contained in the 2005 EU-SILC, this paper investigates the disparities in educational opportunities in Italy and Spain. Its main objective is to analyse the predicted probabilities of successfully completing upper-secondary and tertiary education for individuals with different parental backgrounds, and the changes in these probabilities across birth cohorts extending from 1940 to 1980. The results suggest that the disparities in tertiary education opportunities in Italy tend to increase over time. By contrast, the gap in educational opportunity in Spain shows a marked decrease across the cohorts. Moreover, by using an intuitive decomposition strategy, the paper shows that a large part of the educational gap between individuals of different backgrounds is “composed” of the difference in the endowment of family characteristics. Specifically, it seems that more highly educated parents are more able to endow their children with a better composition of family characteristics, which accounts for a significant proportion of the disparities in educational opportunity. |
| Keywords: | Educational Opportunity, Family Background, Birth cohorts, Italy, Spain |
| JEL: | I21 J12 J62 |
| Date: | 2010–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:xrp:wpaper:xreap2010-05&r=edu |
| By: | José García-Quevedo (Barcelona Institute of Economics (IEB) and Dpt. of Political Economy and Public Finance, University of Barcelona); Francisco Mas-Verdú (Dpt. of Economics and Social Sciences, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia and Barcelona Institute of Economics (IEB)); José Polo-Otero (CYD Foundation and Barcelona Institute of Economics (IEB)) |
| Abstract: | PhD graduates hold the highest education degree, are trained to conduct research and can be considered a key element in the creation, commercialization and diffusion of innovations. The impact of PhDs on innovation and economic development takes place through several channels such as the accumulation of scientific capital stock, the enhancement of technology transfers and the promotion of cooperation relationships in innovation processes. Although the placement of PhDs in industry provides a very important mechanism for transmitting knowledge from universities to firms, information about the characteristics of the firms that employ PhDs is very scarce. The goal of this paper is to improve understanding of the determinants of the demand for PhDs in the private sector. Three main potential determinants of the demand for PhDs are considered: cooperation between firms and universities, R&D activities of firms and several characteristics of firms, size, sector, productivity and age. The results from the econometric analysis show that cooperation between firms and universities encourages firms to recruit PhDs and point to the existence of accumulative effects in the hiring of PhD graduates. |
| Date: | 2010–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:xrp:wpaper:xreap2010-02&r=edu |
| By: | Shenila Rawal (Institute of Education, University of London, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL.); Geeta Kingdon (Institute of Education, University of London, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL.) |
| Abstract: | This paper uses a unique data set from 5028 primary school children in rural India to examine whether the demographic interactions between students and teachers influence student outcomes and whether social distance between student and teacher exacerbates gender, caste and religious gaps in children's achievement. One would expect this to be the case if discrimination and/or role model effects persist in the classroom. School and individual fixed effects methodology are used. In the pupil fixed effects model, across subject variation is used to test whether having a teacher whose gender, caste and religion are the same as that of the student improves student test scores. We find statistically significant positive effects of matching student and teacher characteristics. We find that a student's achievement in a subject in which the teacher shares the same gender, caste and religion as the child is, on average, nearly a quarter of a SD higher than the same child's achievement in a subject taught by a teacher who does not share the child's gender, caste or religion. Policy implications are considered. |
| Keywords: | education, religion, gender |
| JEL: | I2 I21 |
| Date: | 2010–10–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qss:dqsswp:1018&r=edu |
| By: | Alejandro Gaviria; Alejandro Hoyos |
| Abstract: | Welfare programs in Colombia have been focused on reducing malnutrition and hunger and on increasing school attendance rates. However, there is not much evidence on the hypothesized relationship between nutrition and education. Using the National Survey of Nutritional Status in Colombia – 2005 (ENSIN) and the Demographic and Health Survey –2005 (DHS), this paper estimates the impact of nutrition on schooling outcomes. The results suggest that anemic children have a higher probability of lagging behind in school. Malnutrition, defined by anthropometric measures, does not have an impact on schooling lags. School attendance seems to be unrelated to nutrition measures. The results are consistent under different specifications. |
| Date: | 2010–09–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000089:007610&r=edu |
| By: | Daniel Suryadarma |
| Abstract: | This paper measures the evolution of the gender differences in numeracy among school age children using a longitudinal dataset from Indonesia. A unique feature of the dataset is that it uses an identical test for two survey rounds, which implies that any changes in the gender gap are caused by actual changes in numeracy. To my knowledge, this is the first study that is able to distinguish actual changes in numeracy from changes in the difficulty of the tests. I find that girls outperform boys by 0.09 standard deviations when the sample was around 11 years old. Seven years later, the gap has increased to 0.19 standard deviations. This gap is equivalent to around 18 months of schooling. I find evidence for two explanations for the widening gap. The first is that households invest more resources in girls relative to boys. This behavior appears to be rational, driven by the higher labor market returns to numeracy for girls than for boys. In contrast, I find no marriage market returns to numeracy for either gender. The second explanation is that the Indonesian education system appears to play some role in promoting the gender gap. A particular source of this appears to be the teachers, as the gender gap in numeracy only occurs in schools where more than half of the teachers are female. |
| Keywords: | numeracy, gender gap, education, Indonesia |
| JEL: | I21 J16 O15 |
| Date: | 2010–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:auu:dpaper:644&r=edu |
| By: | Mohammed Matar; Imad Brighith |
| Abstract: | A recent research project aimed to gather first-hand data from school users as well as academic performance data from pupils. Researchers compared data obtained from users of new and site-specific schools to that of "standard" ones in order to show whether more attractive and site-specific designs have a positive effect on learning... |
| Date: | 2010–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:eduaac:2010/5-en&r=edu |
| By: | Jenny C. Aker, Christopher Ksoll, and Travis J. Lybbert |
| Abstract: | CGD non-resident fellow Jenny Aker and co-authors report on the results from a randomized evaluation of a mobile phone education program (Project ABC) in Niger, in which adult students learned how to use mobile phones as part of a literacy and numeracy class. Overall, students demonstrated substantial improvements in literacy and numeracy test scores. There is also evidence of persistent impacts: six months after the end of the first year of classes, students in the program retained what they had learned better than others. The effects do not appear to be driven by differences in teacher quality or in teacher and student attendance. The results suggest that simple and relatively cheap information and communication technology can serve as an effective and sustainable learning tool for rural populations. |
| Keywords: | Education |
| Date: | 2010–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cgd:wpaper:223&r=edu |
| By: | EHLERS, Lars |
| Date: | 2010 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mtl:montde:2010-05&r=edu |