03. Journals
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These are journal articles published in World Bank journals as well as externally by World Bank authors.
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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
Financial Constraints and Girls’ Secondary Education: Evidence from School Fee Elimination in The Gambia
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2019-02)We assess the impact of large-scale fee elimination for secondary school girls in The Gambia on the quantity, composition, and achievement of students. The gradual rollout of the program across geographic regions provides identifying variation in the policy. The program increased the number of girls taking the high school exit exam by 55%. The share of older test takers increased in poorer districts, expanding access for students who began school late, repeated grades, or whose studies had been interrupted. Despite these changes in the quantity and composition of students, we find robustly positive point estimates of the program on test scores, with suggestive evidence of gains for several subgroups of both girls and boys. Absence of learning declines is notable in a setting where expanded access could strain limited resources and reduce school quality. Our findings suggest that financial constraints remain serious barriers to post-primary education, and that efforts to expand access to secondary education need not come at the expense of learning in low-income countries like The Gambia. -
Publication
Dynamics of Child Development: Analysis of a Longitudinal Cohort in a Very Low Income Country
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2019-02)Longitudinal patterns of child development and socioeconomic status are described for a cohort of children in Madagascar surveyed when 3–6 and 7–10 years old. Substantial wealth gradients were found across multiple domains: receptive vocabulary, cognition, sustained attention, and working memory. The results are robust to the inclusion of lagged outcomes, maternal endowments, measures of child health, and home stimulation. Wealth gradients are significant at ages 3–4, widen with age, and flatten out by ages 9–10. For vocabulary and sustained attention, the gradient grows steadily between ages three and six; for cognitive composite and memory of phrases, the gradient widens later (ages 7–8) before flattening out. These gaps in cognitive outcomes translate into equally sizeable gaps in learning outcomes. 12–18% of the predicted gap in early outcomes is accounted for by differences in home stimulation, even after controlling for maternal education and endowments. -
Publication
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. -
Publication
Inequality of Educational Opportunity: The Relationship between Access, Affordability, and Quality of Private Schools in Lagos, Nigeria
(Taylor and Francis, 2018)Using data from a census of private schools in one of Lagos, Nigeria’s administrative jurisdictions, this paper explores the linkages between a heterogeneous sector of private schools and issues of school access, affordability, quality, and ultimately social mobility for households at the bottom of the income distribution. Although a large private education market has buoyed Lagos’s growth towards near-universal primary enrolment, this heterogeneous school sector appears to be providing socially stratifying paths towards educational attainment. We apply Lucas’s theory of effectively maintained inequality to assess the extent to which access to higher quality education services within the private sector is determined by cost. We find that higher-cost private schools provide students with greater opportunities to study in institutions with higher quality inputs and increased potential for progression within the educational system. As such, it is highly likely that these schools are primarily accessible to students at the upper ends of the income distribution. -
Publication
Enrollment without Learning: Teacher Effort, Knowledge, and Skill in Primary Schools in Africa
(American Economic Association, 2017-11)School enrollment has universally increased over the last 25 years in low-income countries. Enrolling in school, however, does not assure that children learn. A large share of children in low-income countries complete their primary education lacking even basic reading, writing, and arithmetic skills. Teacher quality is a key determinant of student learning, but not much is known about teacher quality in low-income countries. This paper discusses an ongoing research program intended to help fill this void. We use data collected through direct observations, unannounced visits, and tests from primary schools in seven sub-Saharan African countries to answer three questions: How much do teachers teach? What do teachers know? How well do teachers teach? -
Publication
Willing but Unable? Short-term Experimental Evidence on Parent Empowerment and School Quality
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2017-06-01)Giving power over school management and spending decisions to communities has been a favored strategy to increase school quality, but its effectiveness may depend on local capacity. Grants are one form of such a transfer of power. Short-term responses of a grant to school committees in Niger show that parents increased participation and responsibility, but these efforts did not improve quality on average. Enrollment at the lowest grades increased and school resources improved, but teacher absenteeism increased, and there was no measured impact on test scores. An analysis of heterogeneous impacts and spending decisions provides additional insight into these dynamics. Overall, the findings suggest that programs based on parent participation should take levels of community capacity into account: even when communities are willing to work to improve their schools, they may not be able to do so. The short-term nature of the experiment reduces the extent to which the results can be generalized. -
Publication
Deliberate Disengagement: How Education Can Decrease Political Participation in Electoral Authoritarian Regimes
(Cambridge University Press, 2016-08)A large literature examining advanced and consolidating democracies suggests that education increases political participation. However, in electoral authoritarian regimes, educated voters may instead deliberately disengage. If education increases critical capacities, political awareness, and support for democracy, educated citizens may believe that participation is futile or legitimizes autocrats. We test this argument in Zimbabwe—a paradigmatic electoral authoritarian regime—by exploiting cross-cohort variation in access to education following a major educational reform. We find that education decreases political participation, substantially reducing the likelihood that better-educated citizens vote, contact politicians, or attend community meetings. Consistent with deliberate disengagement, education’s negative effect on participation dissipated following 2008’s more competitive election, which (temporarily) initiated unprecedented power sharing. Supporting the mechanisms underpinning our hypothesis, educated citizens experience better economic outcomes, are more interested in politics, and are more supportive of democracy, but are also more likely to criticize the government and support opposition parties. -
Publication
What Really Works to Improve Learning in Developing Countries?: An Analysis of Divergent Findings in Systematic Reviews
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2016-08)Over the course of just two years, at least six reviews have examined interventions that seek to improve learning outcomes in developing countries. Although the reviews ostensibly have the same objective, they reach sometimes starkly different conclusions. The first objective of this paper is to identify why reviews diverge in their conclusions and how future reviews can be more effective. The second objective is to identify areas of overlap in the recommendations of existing reviews of what works to improve learning. This paper demonstrates that divergence in the recommendations of learning reviews is largely driven by differences in the samples of research incorporated in each review. Of 229 studies with student learning results, the most inclusive review incorporates less than half of the total studies. Across the reviews, two classes of programs are recommended with some consistency. Pedagogical interventions that tailor teaching to student learning levels—either teacher-led or facilitated by adaptive learning software—are effective at improving student test scores, as are individualized, repeated teacher training interventions often associated with a specific task or tool. Future reviews will be most useful if they combine narrative review with meta-analysis, conduct more exhaustive searches, and maintain low aggregation of intervention categories. -
Publication
Decentralization of Health and Education in Developing Countries: A Quality-Adjusted Review of the Empirical Literature
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2016-08)We review empirical evidence on the ability of decentralization to enhance preference matching and technical efficiency in the provision of health and education in developing countries. Many influential surveys have found that the empirical evidence of decentralization's effects on service delivery is weak, incomplete, and often contradictory. Our own unweighted reading of the literature concurs. However, when we organize quantitative evidence first by substantive theme, and then—crucially—by empirical quality and the credibility of its identification strategy, clear patterns emerge. Higher-quality evidence indicates that decentralization increases technical efficiency across a variety of public services, from student test scores to infant mortality rates. Decentralization also improves preference matching in education, and can do so in health under certain conditions, although there is less evidence for both. We discuss individual studies in some detail. Weighting by quality is especially important when quantitative evidence informs policy-making. Firmer conclusions will require an increased focus on research design, and a deeper examination into the prerequisites and mechanisms of successful reforms.