C. Journal articles published externally
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These are journal articles by World Bank authors published externally.
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Publication
Maximizing Child Development: Three Principles for Policymakers
(Taylor and Francis, 2016-11-03)This policy note advances three inter-related principles to guide policy-makers and agents in international development organizations to prioritize their actions. These principles are drawn from findings from two Early Childhood Development (ECD) reports recently completed by the World Bank Independent Evaluation Group—one on the World Bank support for ECD and the other a systematic review of the sustained effects of early childhood interventions. The principles are: Support the Early Development of Children, Starting from Birth; Support Parents Through Existing Services; Make Resources Available to Meet Needs of the Most Vulnerable. These principles imply a new emphasis on development beyond survival with effective, evidence-informed interventions. The policy implications also mean starting with what exists in services in health and protection for vulnerable families and augmenting these with parenting support and education components so that children’s risks are reduced and more poor children will be ready to enter primary school at the appropriate age and to persist through schooling and thrive in the labor market. -
Publication
Child Marriage, Education, and Agency in Uganda
(Taylor and Francis, 2015-10-26)This contribution relies on four different approaches and data sources to assess and discuss the impact of child marriage on secondary school enrollment and completion in Uganda. The four data sources are: (1) qualitative evidence on differences in community and parental preferences for the education of boys and girls and on the higher likelihood of girls to drop out of school in comparison to boys; (2) reasons declared by parents as to why their children have dropped out of school; (3) reasons declared by secondary school principals as to why students drop out; and (4) econometric estimation of the impact of child marriage on secondary school enrollment and completion. Together, the four approaches provide strong evidence that child marriage reduces secondary school enrollment and completion for girls with substantial implications for agency. -
Publication
Economic Impacts of Child Marriage: A Review of the Literature
(Taylor and Francis, 2015-10-23)Child marriage is a widespread violation of human rights. It is an impediment to social and economic development, and it is rooted in gender inequality. The low value placed on girls and women perpetuates the act and acceptability of child marriage in societies where the practice is common. Child marriage is defined as any legal or customary union involving a boy or girl below the age of 18. This definition draws from various conventions, treaties and international agreements, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination against Women, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and recent resolutions of the UN Human Rights Council. While boys sometimes marry young, this paper addresses the practice primarily as it affects girls who make up the large majority of children who are married under 18. If current trends continue, more than 140 million girls will marry early in the next decade or up to 40,000 per day. -
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An Assessment of the Impacts of Sri Lanka’s Programme for School Improvement and School Report Card Programme on Students’ Academic Progress
(Taylor and Francis, 2014-12-03)This paper examines two education programs in Sri Lanka: the Programme for School Improvement (PSI), which decentralizes decision-making power, and the School Report Card Programme (SRCP), which was designed to provide parents and other community members with information on the characteristics and performance of their local schools. Using a difference in differences identification strategy, it finds the following results. First, the PSI program significantly increased Math and English reading test scores among Grade 4 students, but not first language (Sinhalese or Tamil) test scores. However, PSI has had no effect on any test scores of Grade 8 students. In contrast, the SRCP had no significant impacts on any test scores in either grade, and further inquiries revealed that the SRCP was never really implemented. Second, the paper examined the impact of both programs on teacher and school principal variables. Overall, few effects were found, and in some cases effects were found that one would associate with reduced school quality. On a more positive note, the PSI program does appear to have led schools to form School Development Committees (SDCs), as the program stipulates, to establish a list of school priorities and to implement projects funded through local fundraising. -
Publication
Nix the BRICs—At Least for Higher Education Scholarship
(Taylor and Francis, 2014-09-29)Although the “BRIC” moniker for the group of emerging economic powers—Brazil, Russia, India, and China—has become ubiquitous among financial analysts, it was actually coined by former Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill as much for its clear imagery as for any actual commonalities amongst the countries (O’Neill, 2001). The bloc is even less relevant in understanding the complex higher education environments in these or other emerging economic powers such as Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Turkey (for which O’Neill has coined another clever acronym: the MINTs). -
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Conditional, Unconditional and Everything in Between : A Systematic Review of the Effects of Cash Transfer Programs on Schooling Outcomes
(Taylor and Francis, 2014-03-06)Cash transfer programmes are a popular social protection tool in developing countries that aim, among other things, to improve education outcomes in developing countries. The debate over whether these programmes should include conditions has been at the forefront of recent policy discussions. This systematic review aims to complement the existing evidence on the effectiveness of these programmes in improving schooling outcomes and help inform the debate surrounding the design of cash transfer programmes. Using data from 75 reports that cover 35 different studies, the authors find that both conditional cash transfers (CCTs) and unconditional cash transfers (UCTs) improve the odds of being enrolled in and attending school compared to no cash transfer programme. The effect sizes for enrolment and attendance are always larger for CCTs compared to UCTs, but the difference is not statistically significant. When programmes are categorised as having no schooling conditions, having some conditions with minimal monitoring and enforcement and having explicit conditions that are monitored and enforced, a much clearer pattern emerges whereby programmes that are explicitly conditional, monitor compliance and penalise non-compliance have substantively larger effects (60% improvement in odds of enrolment). Unlike enrolment and attendance, the effectiveness of cash transfer programmes on improving test scores is small at best. More research is needed that examines longer-term outcomes such as test scores and, more generally, evaluating the impacts of UCTs. -
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The Contribution of Education to Economic Growth : A Review of the Evidence, with Special Attention and an Application to Sub-Saharan Africa
(Elsevier, 2014-01-31)This paper examines recent studies that estimate the impact of education on economic growth. It explains why cross-country regressions face formidable econometric problems. Recent studies are reviewed: some show strong impacts of education on economic growth; others show little effect. All have multiple estimation problems, which may explain their divergent results. Evidence shows that education quality in Sub-Saharan Africa is much lower than in other developing countries. Estimates from three influential studies are extended; the results suggest that the impact of education on economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa is lower than in other countries, likely due to lower school quality. -
Publication
Heterogeneity in Returns to Investment in Education in Egypt
(World Scientific, 2013-09-25)The paper estimates the rates of return to investment in education in Egypt, allowing for multiple sources of heterogeneity across individuals. The paper finds that, in the period 1998–2006, returns to education increased for workers with higher education, but fell for workers with intermediate education levels; the relative wage of illiterate workers also fell in the period. This change can be explained by supply and demand factors. On the supply side, the number workers with intermediate education, as well as illiterate ones, outpaced the growth of other categories joining the labor force during the decade. From the labor demand side, the Egyptian economy experienced a structural transformation by which sectors demanding higher-skilled labor, such as financial intermediation and communications, gained importance to the detriment of agriculture and construction, which demand lower-skilled workers. In Egypt, individuals are sorted into different educational tracks, creating the first source of heterogeneity: those that are sorted into the general secondary-university track have higher returns than those sorted into vocational training. Second, the paper finds that large-firm workers earn higher returns than small-firm workers. Third, females have larger returns to education. Female government workers earn similar wages as private sector female workers, while male workers in the private sector earn a premium of about 20 percent on average. This could lead to higher female reservation wages, which could explain why female unemployment rates are significantly higher than male unemployment rates. Formal workers earn higher rates of return to education than those in the informal sector, which did not happen a decade earlier. And finally, those individuals with access to technology (as proxied by personal computer ownership) have higher returns. -
Publication
Education and Equal Opportunities among Liberian Children
(Taylor and Francis, 2013-09-12)This paper expands the analysis of equal opportunities by connecting traditional benefit incidence analysis of public spending with the human opportunity index, a distribution sensitive measure of access to public services. It also develops ex-ante micro-simulations to determine the cost of equalizing educational opportunities. This technique is applied to Liberia, a country devastated by civil war with serious educational enrollment gaps and policies highly dependent on international aid. Results from simulated increases in teachers’ salaries, elimination of fee and non-fee costs and targeted public educational spending on rural schools all point to very modest redistributive effects but distinctive patterns of winners and losers among Liberian children. -
Publication
Evaluating a Community-Based Early Childhood Education and Development Program in Indonesia: Study Protocol for a Pragmatic Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial with Supplementary Matched Control Group
(BioMed Central, 2013-08-16)This paper presents the study protocol for a pragmatic cluster randomized controlled trial (RCT) with a supplementary matched control group. The aim of the trial is to evaluate a community-based early education and development program launched by the Government of Indonesia. The program was developed in collaboration with the World Bank with a total budget of US$127.7 million, and targets an estimated 738,000 children aged 0 to 6 years living in approximately 6,000 poor communities. The aim of the program is to increase access to early childhood services with the secondary aim of improving school readiness.