Posted Content•
School Participation in Rural India
01 Aug 1999-Research Papers in Economics (Centre for Development Economics, Delhi School of Economics)-
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present an analysis of the determinant of school participation in rural north India, based on a recent household survey which includes detailed information on school characteristics, including parental education and motivation, social background, dependency ratios, work opportunities, village development, teacher posting, teacher regularity and mid-day meals.
Abstract: This paper presents an analysis of the determinant of school participation in rural north India, based on a recent household survey which includes detailed information on school characteristics. School participation especially among girls, responds to a wide range of variables, including parental education and motivation, social background, dependency ratios, work opportunities, village development, teacher posting , teacher regularity and mid-day meals. The remarkable lead achieved by the state of Himachal Pradesh is fully accounted for by these variables. School quality matters, but it is not related in a simply way to specific inputs.
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors show that the assumption of optimal resource allocation fails and that the heterogeneity of rates of return to the same factor within a single economy, a heterogeneity that dwarfs the cross-country heterogeneity in the economy-wide average return, poses problems for old and new growth theories alike.
Abstract: Growth theory traditionally assumed the existence of an aggregate production function, whose existence and properties are closely tied to the assumption of optimal resource allocation within each economy. We show extensive evidence, culled from the microdevelopment literature, demonstrating that the assumption of optimal resource allocation fails radically. The key fact is the enormous heterogeneity of rates of return to the same factor within a single economy, a heterogeneity that dwarfs the cross-country heterogeneity in the economy-wide average return. Prima facie, we argue, this evidence poses problems for old and new growth theories alike. We then review the literature on various causes of this misallocation. We go on to calibrate a simple model which explicitly introduces the possibility of misallocation into an otherwise standard growth model. We show that, in order to match the data, it is not enough to have misallocated factors: There also needs to be important fixed costs in production. We conclude by outlining the contour of a possible non-aggregate growth theory, and review the existing attempts to take such a model to the data.
809 citations
Cites background from "School Participation in Rural India..."
...(1998) and Dreze and Kingdon (2001)] and one experimental trial conducted among pre-school children in Kenya [Vermeersch (2002)]....
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors provide an overview of school education in India and place India's educational achievements in international perspective, particularly against countries with which it is now increasingly compared, especially China.
Abstract: This paper provides an overview of school education in India. First, it places India's educational achievements in international perspective, particularly against countries with which it is now increasingly compared, especially China. Second, the paper examines schooling access in terms of enrolment and school attendance rates, and schooling quality in terms of literacy rates, learning achievement levels, school resources, and teacher inputs. Third, the paper investigates the role of private schooling in India, examining the extent of growth of private schooling and surveying evidence on the relative effectiveness and unit costs of private and public schools. Last, the paper discusses some major public education initiatives. The concluding section suggests a future research agenda and appeals for rigorous evaluation of the impacts and costs of the numerous existing educational interventions, in order to learn about their relative cost-effectiveness for evidence-based policy-making.
431 citations
Cites background from "School Participation in Rural India..."
...Drèze and Kingdon (2001) find that both demand- and supply-side factors are important in explaining schooling participation in India....
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Posted Content•
TL;DR: In this paper, the main preconditions for the transition to sustainable national programs are mainstreaming school feeding in national policies and plans, especially education sector plans; identifying national sources of financing; and expanding national implementation capacity.
Abstract: This review highlights three main findings. First, school feeding programs in low-income countries exhibit large variation in cost, with concomitant opportunities for cost containment. Second, as countries get richer, school feeding costs become a much smaller proportion of the investment in education. For example, in Zambia the cost of school feeding is about 50 percent of annual per capita costs for primary education; in Ireland it is only 10 percent. Further analysis is required to define these relationships, but supporting countries to maintain an investment in school feeding through this transition may emerge as a key role for development partners. Third, the main preconditions for the transition to sustainable national programs are mainstreaming school feeding in national policies and plans, especially education sector plans; identifying national sources of financing; and expanding national implementation capacity. Mainstreaming a development policy for school feeding into national education sector plans offers the added advantage of aligning support for school feeding with the processes already established to harmonize development partner support for the education for all-fast track initiative.
291 citations
TL;DR: A survey of the literature on child labor can be found in this article, focusing mainly on the new literature based on modern economic theory and econometrics, with the objective of contributing to better informed discussion and policy design.
Abstract: The problem of child labor has moved from a matter of regional and national concern to one of international debate and possible global persuasion and policy intervention. In crafting policy for mitigating this enormous problem of our times, it is important to start with a proper theoretical and empirical understanding of the phenomenon. What gives rise to child labor, and what are its consequences? What interventions might end child labor without hurting children? A well-meaning but poorly designed policy can exacerbate the poverty in which these laboring children live, even leading to starvation. The article surveys the large and rapidly growing literature on this subject, focusing mainly on the new literature based on modern economic theory and econometrics. It also looks at some of the broad policy implications of these new findings, with the objective of contributing to better informed discussion and policy design.
289 citations
Cites background from "School Participation in Rural India..."
...Dreze and Kingdon (1999) find that school participation among girls is 15 percent higher when the local school provides a mid-day meal and that girls’ schooling responds more to such incentives than boys’ schooling—an important finding for efforts to keep girls away from work, which, though often…...
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...Among the policy intervention that build in incentives for parents to send their children to school (or for children to go to school) are Bolsa Escola in Brazil (Bourguignon and others 2003; Lavinas and others forthcoming),(21) Progresa in Mexico (Schultz 2001; Skoufias and Parker forthcoming), Red de Protección Social in Nicaragua (Maluccio forthcoming), food for education programs in Bangladesh (Ravallion and Wodon 2000), mid-day meal schemes in India (Dreze and Kingdon 1999), school construction programs in Indonesia (Duflo 2000), and back-to-school measures in Indonesia following the financial crisis (Filmer and Sayed 1999). Schooling has responded to such incentives in most of these programs. Dreze and Kingdon (1999) find that school participation among girls is 15 percent higher when the local school provides a mid-day meal and that girls’ schooling responds more to such incentives than boys’ schooling—an important finding for efforts to keep girls away from work, which, though often invisible, frequently involves more hours than boys’ work....
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...…Social in Nicaragua (Maluccio forthcoming), food for education programs in Bangladesh (Ravallion and Wodon 2000), mid-day meal schemes in India (Dreze and Kingdon 1999), school construction programs in Indonesia (Duflo 2000), and back-to-school measures in Indonesia following the financial…...
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TL;DR: The intention-to-treat estimator of the effect of the randomized program incorporates those price effects that would not happen if the school meals were offered in all schools, and therefore it should be considered a lower bound on theeffect of generalized school meals.
Abstract: This brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study, entitled School meals, educational achievement, and school competition : evidence from a randomized evaluation, conducted between 2000 and 2002 in Kenya. The study observed the impact of subsidized school meals on school participation, educational achievement, and school finance in a developing country setting that was implemented in 25 randomly chosen preschools in a pool of 50 schools on the child level. The school feeding program had a positive significant impact on school participation (treated students participated in school 35.9 percent of the time versus 27.4 for the comparison group). The program led to a significant improvement in test scores, but only in schools where teachers were more experienced at the onset of the program. There was no impact on cognitive abilities. The program led to a significant improvement in the weight of boys, but no improvement in the height or weight of girls. The increased participation led to overcrowding, but had no impact on teacher absenteeism. Also, the school meals displaced teaching time. Funding for the study derived from the Dutch Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), Internationaal Christelijk Steunfonds (ICS).
253 citations
References
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Posted Content•
TL;DR: In this article, the authors point out that public and professional interest in education is likely to be short-lived, doomed to dissipate as frustration over the inability of policy to improve school practice sets in.
Abstract: N RECENT YEARS, public and professional interest in schools has been heightened by a spate of reports, many of them critical of current school policy.' These policy documents have added to persistent and long-standing concerns about the cost, effectiveness, and fairness of the current school structure, and have made schooling once again a serious public issue. As in the past, however, any renewed interest in education is likely to be short-lived, doomed to dissipate as frustration over the inability of policy to improve school practice sets in. This frustration about school policy relates directly to knowledge about the educational production process and in turn to underlying research on schools. Although the educational process has been extensively researched, clear policy prescriptions flowing from this research have been difficult to derive.2 There exists, however, a consistency to the research findings that does have an immediate application to school policy: Schools differ dramatically in "quality,"
3,102 citations
"School Participation in Rural India..." refers background in this paper
...17 See the reviews by Fuller (1986) and Hanushek (1986, 1995)....
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...Early studies for developed countries, reviewed in Hanushek (1986), suggest that pupil achievements are independent of the pupil-teacher ratio, after controlling for pupil characteristics....
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TL;DR: The authors illustrates the danger of spurious regression from this kind of misspecification, using as an example a wage regression estimated on data for individual workers that includes in the specification aggregate regressors for characteristics of geographical states.
Abstract: Many economic researchers have attempted to measure the effect of aggregate market or public policy variables on micro units by merging aggregate data with micro observations by industry, occupation, or geographical location, then using multiple regression or similar statistical models to measure the effect of the aggregate variable on the micro units. The methods are usually based upon the assumption of independent disturbances, which is typically not appropriate for data from populations with grouped structure. Incorrectly using ordinary least squares can lead to standard errors that are seriously biased downward. This note illustrates the danger of spurious regression from this kind of misspecification, using as an example a wage regression estimated on data for individual workers that includes in the specification aggregate regressors for characteristics of geographical states. Copyright 1990 by MIT Press.
2,859 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1997
TL;DR: Deaton as discussed by the authors reviewed the analysis of household survey data, including the construction of household surveys, the econometric tools useful for such analysis, and a range of problems in development policy for which this survey analysis can be applied.
Abstract: Two decades after its original publication, The Analysis of Household Surveys is reissued with a new preface by its author, Sir Angus Deaton, recipient of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. This classic work remains relevant to anyone with a serious interest in using household survey data to shed light on policy issues. This book reviews the analysis of household survey data, including the construction of household surveys, the econometric tools useful for such analysis, and a range of problems in development policy for which this survey analysis can be applied. The author's approach remains close to the data, using transparent econometric and graphical techniques to present data in a way that can clearly inform policy and academic debates. Chapter 1 describes the features of survey design that need to be understood in order to undertake appropriate analysis. Chapter 2 discusses the general econometric and statistical issues that arise when using survey data for estimation and inference. Chapter 3 covers the use of survey data to measure welfare, poverty, and distribution. Chapter 4 focuses on the use of household budget data to explore patterns of household demand. Chapter 5 discusses price reform, its effects on equity and efficiency, and how to measure them. Chapter 6 addresses the role of household consumption and saving in economic development. The book includes an appendix providing code and programs using STATA, which can serve as a template for the users' own analysis.
1,195 citations
"School Participation in Rural India..." refers background in this paper
...The following indicators were considered, among others: pupil-teacher ratios; physical facilities; the 15 See e.g. Angrist and Lavy (1996), Case and Deaton (1997)....
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...In the tables below, we report robust t-values adjusted for cluster effects, i.e. the possibility of correlated errors across individual observations within each village (Deaton, 1997, p.77; Moulton, 1990)....
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...…the observations are restricted to children in the 5-12 age group.20 When ‘grade attainment’ is the dependent variable, 19 In principle, a fourth dependent variable could have been considered: ‘grade-for-age’, i.e. the grade in which a child of a given age is studying (as in Case and Deaton, 1997)....
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...Caste: It is well known that school participation and educational levels in India are particularly low among socially disadvantaged communities, notably the ‘scheduled castes’....
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...Accordingly, when ‘current enrolment’ is used as the left-hand side variable, the observations are restricted to children in the 5-12 age group.20 When ‘grade attainment’ is the dependent variable, 19 In principle, a fourth dependent variable could have been considered: ‘grade-for-age’, i.e. the grade in which a child of a given age is studying (as in Case and Deaton, 1997)....
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Posted Content•
TL;DR: In this article, the effect of class size on student achievement has been investigated in the context of test scores of Israeli 4th and 5th graders and 3rd graders.
Abstract: The effect of class size on student achievement has long been of concern to educators, parents, and scholars. In Israeli public schools today, class size is partly determined using a rule proposed by Maimonides in the 12th century. This rule induces a nonlinear and non-monotonic relationship between enroll- ment size and class size. We use this relationship to construct instrumental variables estimates of the effect of class size on the test scores of Israeli 4th and 5th graders in 1991 and 3rd graders in 1992. Because the up-and-down pattern in class size induced by Maimonides' rule matches a similar pattern in test scores, the rule provides a credible source of exogenous variation for investigation of the causal effect of class size on student achievement. Our use of Maimonides' rule can be viewed as an application of Campbell's (1969) regression-discontinuity design to the class size question. The results of this application show that reductions in class size induce a significant increase in reading and math scores for 5th graders and a smaller increase in reading scores for 4th graders. In contrast, there is little evidence of any association between class size and the test scores of 3rd graders, although this finding may result from problems with the 1992 wave of the testing program. The estimates also suggest that the gains from small classes are largest for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Besides being of metho- dological interest and providing new evidence on the class size question, these findings are of immediate policy interest in Israel where legislation to reduce the maximum class size is pending.
968 citations
"School Participation in Rural India..." refers background in this paper
...The following indicators were considered, among others: pupil-teacher ratios; physical facilities; the 15 See e.g. Angrist and Lavy (1996), Case and Deaton (1997)....
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TL;DR: Diverse influences on pupil achievement in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East is explored to conclude that the predominant influence on student learning is the quality of the schools and teachers to which children are exposed.
Abstract: Most previous research on effects of schooling has concluded that the effect of school or teacher quality on academic achievement is less than that of family background or other characteristics of students that predate entry into school. However, the evidence for that generalization is derived mainly from a few of the world's school systems. This paper explores diverse influences on pupil achievement in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. Children who attend primary school in countries with low per capita incomes have learned substantially less after similar amounts of time in school than have pupils in high income countries. At the same time, the lower the income of the country, the weaker the influence of pupils' social status on achievement. Conversely, in low income countries, the effect of school and teacher quality on academic achievement in primary school is comparatively greater. From these data it is possible to conclude that the predominant influence on student learning is the quality of the schools and teachers to which children are exposed.
821 citations
"School Participation in Rural India..." refers background in this paper
...16 For earlier analyses of the relation between teacher-pupil ratios and school participation (or pupil achievements) in India, see Heyneman and Loxley (1982, 1983) and Kingdon (1994, 1996)....
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