C. Journal articles published externally
2,064 items available
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These are journal articles by World Bank authors published externally.
Items in this collection
1 - 10 of 23
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Publication
Factors Associated with Educational and Career Aspirations of Young Women and Girls in Sierra Leone
(Taylor and Francis, 2021-09-05)Empirical data on the aspirations of young women and girls in post-conflict settings are scarce. This article analyses the factors associated with the educational and career aspirations of 2,473 young women and girls in Sierra Leone. Findings indicated that over three-quarters of our sample aspired to continue their studies up to the university level, and two-thirds aspired to obtain a formal sector job requiring an education. These findings are important for discussions of aid which can accelerate economic advances and opportunities within advanced economies for both women and men. -
Publication
Preschool Availability and Women’s Employment: Evidence from Indonesia
(The University of Chicago Press, 2021-04)While a large body of literature has documented positive impacts of institutional childcare on maternal labor supply, thinner evidence is available on whether childcare can also nudge women into better jobs in developing countries. We evaluate the impact of public preschool expansion in Indonesia on women’s labor supply and characteristics linked to the quality of their employment, including employment types, earnings, and hours. We rely on a triple difference approach exploiting variations in preschool availability over time and across districts, as well as preschool-age-eligibility cutoffs, in a panel dataset spanning over 20 years. We find strong positive impacts on employment—an additional public preschool per 1,000 children in the district increases women’s work participation by 9.1 percent. However, it is primarily driven by an increase in unpaid family work, typically in household farms or businesses. We do not find impacts on earnings or hours of work. These findings are likely explained by the modality of preschools in Indonesia: operating for only 3 hours per day, they are unlikely to enable women to secure a paid job outside the home with longer time commitments. -
Publication
Engaging Men to Transform Inequitable Gender Attitudes and Prevent Intimate Partner Violence: A Cluster Randomised Controlled Trial in North and South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo
(BMJ Global Health, 2020-05-27)Globally, one in three women worldwide report experiencing intimate partner violence (IPV) in their lifetime. The study objective was to understand the effectiveness of Engaging Men through Accountable Practice (EMAP), a group-based discussion series which sought to transform gender relations in communities, on intimate partner violence (IPV), gender inequitable attitudes and related outcomes. Interventions engaging men have the potential to change gender attitudes and behaviours in conflict-affected areas. However, while EMAP led to changes in gender attitudes and behaviours related to perpetration of IPV, the study showed no overall reduction of women’s experience of IPV. Further research is needed to understand how working with men may lead to long-term and meaningful changes in IPV and related gender equitable attitudes and behaviours in conflict areas. -
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Returns to Investment in Education: A Decennial Review of the Global Literature
(Taylor and Francis, 2018-06-07)In the 60-plus year history of returns to investment in education estimates, there have been several compilations in the literature. This paper updates Psacharopoulos and Patrinos and reviews the latest trends and patterns based on 1120 estimates in 139 countries from 1950 to 2014. The private average global return to a year of schooling is 9% a year. Private returns to higher education increased, raising issues of financing and equity. Social returns to schooling remain high. Women continue to experience higher average returns to schooling, showing that girls’ education remains a priority. -
Publication
Girls' Education and Child Marriage in West and Central Africa: Trends, Impacts, Costs, and Solutions
(Taylor and Francis, 2018-04-26)Within the context of women’s lack of empowerment, the issues of child marriage and low educational attainment for girls are prominent, especially in West and Central Africa. Using survey data for 21 of the 25 countries in West and Central Africa, this article analyzes trends over time in educational attainment for girls and child marriage. Over the last two and a half decades, not accounting for differences in population sizes between countries, according to the latest DHS and MICS surveys available in each country, completion rates increased on average by 24 points, 14 points, and 8 points at the primary, lower secondary, and upper secondary levels, respectively. The prevalence of child marriage decreased by about 8 points over that period. Clearly, progress at the secondary level has been weaker than at the primary level, probably in part due to the persistence of high rates of child marriage in many countries. The article suggests that ending child marriage should improve girls’ educational attainment, and conversely, improving girls’ educational attainment should help reduce child marriage. This, in turn, could have major impacts toward contributing to empowering women more broadly. A review of impact evaluations for pilot interventions suggests how ending child marriage and improving educational attainment for girls could be done, with potentially large economic benefits not only for girls and their future household, but also for the region as a whole. -
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As Good as the Networks They Keep?: Improving Outcomes through Weak Ties in Rural Uganda
(The University of Chicago Press, 2018-04)We examine an intervention randomized at the village level in which female farmers invited to a single training session were randomly paired with farmers whom they did not know and encouraged to share new agricultural information throughout the growing season for a recently adopted cash crop. We show that the intervention signi ficantly increased the productivity of all farmers except of those who were already in the highest quintile of productivity, and that there were signifi cant spillovers in productivity to male farmers. -
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Competition or Cooperation?: Using Team and Tournament Incentives for Learning among Female Farmers in Rural Uganda
(Elsevier, 2018-03)This study explores the behavioral learning characteristics of smallholder female farmers in Uganda by quantifying the amount of information learned under different incentive schemes. The paper shows how competitive versus team incentives compare in motivating Ugandan farmers to learn and share information relevant to adopting a new agricultural technology. We find that tournament-based incentives provide greater outcomes in terms of total information learned than threshold-based team incentives. Furthermore the order of the incentive – whether the tournament precedes or follows the team incentive scheme – does not affect the volume of information learned. New information introduced between rounds was learned by more individuals under team incentives than under tournament incentives. The study provides direct practical policy recommendations for improving learning in the context of agriculture in Uganda. -
Publication
Support for Gender Stereotypes: Does Madrasah Education Matter?
(Taylor and Francis, 2018-01-11)This paper examines the influence of the institutional nature of schools on gender stereotyping by exploring contrasts between non-religious and Islamic faith (that is madrasah) schools among secondary school-going adolescents in rural Bangladesh. In particular, differences in gender attitudes across school types are explored to elucidate what about schools matters. Using a uniquely designed survey to assess the influence of school type on student characteristics, we find large differences in stereotypical gender attitudes by school type and student gender. Madrasah students in general, and unrecognized madrasah students in particular, show unfavorable attitudes about women and their abilities compared to their peers in non-religious schools. However, these differences are diminished considerably in ordered probit models suggesting that school-level differences are explained by teacher characteristics such as the nature of teacher training and average family size of teachers. These estimated effects are robust to conditioning on a rich set of family characteristics. -
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Well Begun, but Aiming Higher: A Review of Vietnam’s Education Trends in the past 20 Years and Emerging Challenges
(Taylor and Francis, 2018)Given its modest position as a lower-middle-income country, Vietnam stands out from the rest of the world with its remarkable performance on standardized test scores, school enrollment, and completed years of schooling. We provide an overview of the factors behind this exemplary performance both from an institutional viewpoint and by analyzing several different data sources, some of which have rarely been used. Some of the highlights are universal primary school enrollment, higher girls’ net enrollment rates, and the role of within-commune individual factors. We further discuss a host of challenges for the country – most of which have received insufficient attention to date. -
Publication
Education Budget Savings from Ending Child Marriage and Early Childbirths: The Case of Niger
(Taylor and Francis, 2018)Ending child marriage and early childbirths would reduce total fertility rates and population growth especially in countries with a high incidence of child marriage, early childbirths, or both. Savings for public budgets could be large. This article relies on demographic projections and a UNESCO costing model for the provision of education by governments to estimate savings that could result from ending child marriage and early childbirths for public education budgets. The analysis is conducted for Niger, the country with the highest rate of child marriage in the world.