Person:
Hasan, Amer
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Early childhood development,
Education,
Impact evaluation
Degrees
ORCID
External Links
Departments
Education Global Practice, South Asia Region
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
January 31, 2023
Biography
Amer Hasan is a Senior Economist with the Education Global Practice, focusing on the South Asia Region (SAR). His most recent assignment before this was with the Human Capital Project team. He has also been a part of the East Asia and Pacific (EAP) Education team where he worked on Indonesia and China and served as Task Team Leader on both lending and analytical operations. He was the EAP regional focal point for Early Childhood as well as for Disability Inclusive Education. He co-led the 2018 flagship report on the quality of education in EAP entitled “Growing Smarter: Learning and Equitable Development in East Asia and Pacific.” Amer holds a PhD and Masters in Public Policy from the University of Chicago as well as a BA in History from Yale University.
Publication Search Results
1 - 5 of 5
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Publication
Learning Losses in Pakistan Due to COVID-19 School Closures: A Technical Note on Simulation Results
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-10)Pakistan was among the first countries in the world to institute widespread school closures as a result of Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19). What are the expected levels of learning that teachers will have to deal with in the class? Will children have lost learning while schools were closed? What should teachers, parents, and children expect from the first few weeks of schooling? How can parents, teachers, and the school system as a whole help children catch up? While school closures have been effective in supporting efforts at social distancing, they may well have serious consequences for schooling and learning. This note presents results from a series of simulations that aim to capture the impacts that school closures in Pakistan may have on the learning levels, enrollment, and future earnings of children and students. In this note, the authors present an overview of how these numbers are calculated and how to interpret them. This note draws on a simulation exercise for all countries on which data is available, including Pakistan, conducted by researchers at the World Bank. -
Publication
Gender-targeted Conditional Cash Transfers : Enrollment, Spillover Effects and Instructional Quality
( 2010-03-01)This paper considers the effects of a gender-targeted conditional cash transfer program for girls in classes 6 to 8. It finds that the program is successful in increasing the enrollment of girls in classes 6 to 8 as intended. It also finds evidence to suggest that the program generated positive spillover effects on the enrollment of boys. This success does, however, appear to be poised to come at a cost. The student-teacher ratio in treated districts is also climbing. This suggests that in the absence of active steps to address these increasing student-teacher ratios, instructional quality is likely to suffer. The success of the program appears to be driven by enrollment increases in urban schools. This suggests the need for a reassessment of the targeting criteria in rural schools. -
Publication
Time Allocation in Rural Households : The Indirect Effects of Conditional Cash Transfer Programs
( 2010-03-01)Conditional cash transfers are being heralded as effective tools against the intergenerational transmission of poverty. There is substantial evidence on the positive effects of these transfers. Analysts are only now beginning to investigate the indirect effects these programs generate. This paper examines the effect of a gender-targeted conditional cash transfer program on the time allocation of mothers in rural program-eligible households. Using a fixed effects difference-in-differences estimator, the author finds that program eligibility is associated with an increase of 120 minutes of housework per typical school day by mothers of eligible children in the stipend district when compared with mothers of eligible children in the non-stipend district. There is a 100-minute reduction in the amount of time mothers report spending on children s needs. The intent-to-treat effect of the program suggests no change in the amount of time spent on paid work or sleep. -
Publication
SMS Girl Data Insights: How Has COVID-19 Affected Support for Girls’ Education in Punjab, Pakistan?
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-04)This brief presents initial findings from an ongoing phone survey of families in Punjab, Pakistan designed to assess what is happening to girls’ elementary school education during COVID-19. The data used in this brief describe the experiences of 5,898 families in Punjab between August and October 2020. Data have been weighted to make the sample representative of all schools in Punjab. This brief provides information from an on-going survey. Further data is being collected and analyzed. Subsequent briefs will provide updates on these families as we learn more about their experiences. Unless otherwise noted, statistics are based on the full sample of households contacted, 90 percent of which are families with girls in grades 5-7 before the pandemic. Statistics are weighted to make the sample representative of all schools in Punjab and to allow comparisons between boys and girls. -
Publication
Risks to Child Development and School Readiness among Children under Six in Pakistan: Findings from a Nationally Representative Phone Survey
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-11)This paper analyzes the risks to child development and school readiness among children under age 6 in Pakistan. Drawing on a nationally representative telephone survey conducted between December 2021 and February 2022, it presents the first nationally representative estimates of child development for children under 3 years of age and school readiness for children 3 to 6 years of age, using internationally validated instruments. The paper examines how risk factors such as parental distress, lack of psychosocial stimulation, food insecurity, low maternal education, no enrollment in early childhood education, and living in a rural area are associated with children’s outcomes. The data indicate that more than half (57 percent) of parents with children under age 3 were distressed and that 61 percent of households reported cutting down on the size of or skipping meals since the start of the pandemic. The data reveal that over half of parents fail to engage in adequate psychosocial stimulation with their child and enrollment in early childhood education is very low (39 percent). The paper finds that child development outcomes decline rapidly as the number of risks increase. Specifically, for children under 3 years, lack of psychosocial stimulation at home and higher levels of parental distress were most significantly associated with lower child development levels. For a child aged 3 to 6 years, early childhood education enrollment and the amount of psychosocial stimulation the child receives at home had the strongest association with school readiness scores.