Publication: Heterogenous Peer Effects, Segregation and Academic Attainment
Loading...
Date
2011-06-01
ISSN
Published
2011-06-01
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
Socioeconomic segregation is often decried for denying poorer children the benefits of positive 'peer effects'. Yet standard, linear-in-means models of peer effects (a) implicitly assume that segregation is zero sum, with gains and losses to rich and poor perfectly offsetting, and (b) rule out theories of 'social distance' whereby peer effects are strongest among similar pairings. The paper exploits the random assignment of pupils between classes to identify more general peer effects in Argentine test-score data. Estimates violate both assumptions (a) and (b), and provide micro foundations for the correlations between school segregation, average test-scores, and test-score inequality in municipality-level data.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Lugo, Maria Ana. 2011. Heterogenous Peer Effects, Segregation and Academic Attainment. Policy Research working paper ; no. WPS 5718. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/3482 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Publication The Macroeconomic Implications of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Options(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-29)Estimating the macroeconomic implications of climate change impacts and adaptation options is a topic of intense research. This paper presents a framework in the World Bank's macrostructural model to assess climate-related damages. This approach has been used in many Country Climate and Development Reports, a World Bank diagnostic that identifies priorities to ensure continued development in spite of climate change and climate policy objectives. The methodology captures a set of impact channels through which climate change affects the economy by (1) connecting a set of biophysical models to the macroeconomic model and (2) exploring a set of development and climate scenarios. The paper summarizes the results for five countries, highlighting the sources and magnitudes of their vulnerability --- with estimated gross domestic product losses in 2050 exceeding 10 percent of gross domestic product in some countries and scenarios, although only a small set of impact channels is included. The paper also presents estimates of the macroeconomic gains from sector-level adaptation interventions, considering their upfront costs and avoided climate impacts and finding significant net gross domestic product gains from adaptation opportunities identified in the Country Climate and Development Reports. Finally, the paper discusses the limits of current modeling approaches, and their complementarity with empirical approaches based on historical data series. The integrated modeling approach proposed in this paper can inform policymakers as they make proactive decisions on climate change adaptation and resilience.Publication Global Poverty Revisited Using 2021 PPPs and New Data on Consumption(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-05)Recent improvements in survey methodologies have increased measured consumption in many low- and lower-middle-income countries that now collect a more comprehensive measure of household consumption. Faced with such methodological changes, countries have frequently revised upward their national poverty lines to make them appropriate for the new measures of consumption. This in turn affects the World Bank’s global poverty lines when they are periodically revised. The international poverty line, which is based on the typical poverty line in low-income countries, increases by around 40 percent to $3.00 when the more recent national poverty lines as well as the 2021 purchasing power parities are incorporated. The net impact of the changes in international prices, the poverty line, and new survey data (including new data for India) is an increase in global extreme poverty by some 125 million people in 2022, and a significant shift of poverty away from South Asia and toward Sub-Saharan Africa. The changes at higher poverty lines, which are more relevant to middle-income countries, are mixed.Publication Geopolitical Fragmentation and Friendshoring(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-26)This paper examines the relationship between geopolitical fragmentation and friendshoring of foreign investments over time, countries, and sectors. The analysis uses comprehensive data on foreign direct investments covering greenfield projects, mergers and acquisitions, and stocks of affiliates, as well as data on four alternative measures of geopolitical distance between countries. The gravity estimations suggest that, first, geopolitical differences have a negative effect on foreign investments and the magnitude has heightened in the post-pandemic period compared to a decade ago. Second, it is primarily the companies from advanced Western economies whose foreign investment decisions are increasingly shaped by friendshoring forces. Finally, the paper shows that friendshoring is not only confined to strategic industries, implying that allocations of foreign direct investments may not solely reflect national security or resilience considerations.Publication Soaring Food Prices Threaten Recent Economic Gains in the EU(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-02)The surge in food prices following the 2021 economic rebound has become a significant concern for households, particularly low-income ones, in Bulgaria, Croatia, Poland, and Romania. Food price inflation, which surpasses general inflation rates, risks worsening poverty and food insecurity in these countries. This paper explores the distributional impacts of rising food prices and the effectiveness of government response measures. Low-income households, who allocate a larger share of their income to food, are disproportionately affected and are struggling to cope with unexpected expenses, leading to increased difficulties in accessing proper nutrition. Simulations indicate that rising food prices contribute to higher poverty rates and greater income inequality, especially among vulnerable populations. They also suggest that the main poverty-targeted social assistance schemes offer critical support for the extreme poor, but expanding both coverage and benefits is vital to shield all at-risk individuals. Targeted policies that balance immediate relief with long-term resilience-building are essential to addressing the challenges posed by escalating food prices.Publication Disentangling the Key Economic Channels through Which Infrastructure Affects Jobs(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-04-03)This paper takes stock of the literature on infrastructure and jobs published since the early 2000s, using a conceptual framework to identify the key channels through which different types of infrastructure impact jobs. Where relevant, it highlights the different approaches and findings in the cases of energy, digital, and transport infrastructure. Overall, the literature review provides strong evidence of infrastructure’s positive impact on employment, particularly for women. In the case of electricity, this impact arises from freeing time that would otherwise be spent on household tasks. Similarly, digital infrastructure, particularly mobile phone coverage, has demonstrated positive labor market effects, often driven by private sector investments rather than large public expenditures, which are typically required for other large-scale infrastructure projects. The evidence on structural transformation is also positive, with some notable exceptions, such as studies that find no significant impact on structural transformation in rural India in the cases of electricity and roads. Even with better market connections, remote areas may continue to lack economic opportunities, due to the absence of agglomeration economies and complementary inputs such as human capital. Accordingly, reducing transport costs alone may not be sufficient to drive economic transformation in rural areas. The spatial dimension of transformation is particularly relevant for transport, both internationally—by enhancing trade integration—and within countries, where economic development tends to drive firms and jobs toward urban centers, benefitting from economies scale and network effects. Turning to organizational transformation, evidence on skill bias in developing countries is more mixed than in developed countries and may vary considerably by context. Further research, especially on the possible reasons explaining the differences between developed and developing economies, is needed.
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Decentralized Service Delivery for the Poor : Volume 2, Background Papers(Washington, DC, 2006-08)This report on the decentralized service delivery for the poor is structured in two volumes. Volume one is a cross-sectoral report, the core report. The first part includes the program and performance overview which describes the programs (including their poverty goals) and their process of decentralization, the overview of expenditures, the access of the poor to these services, and the evidence on the quality of services. The second part of the core report is on the institutional dimensions of decentralized service delivery which includes the World Development Report (WDR) 2004-type framework of accountability, adapted to the situation in Mexico. Volume two contains the sectoral pieces. For this report-the third phase of a programmatic series of studies on poverty in Mexico-Mexico's social cabinet requested that the Bank analyze service delivery of a specific list of programs that are essential to the government's development strategy in the context of decentralization. The elements of the government's strategy considered here-basic education, health care for the population without social security coverage, local social infrastructure, and local rural development-all aim directly or indirectly to reduce poverty. Both social and economic services shape the opportunities of poor people. Social services contribute to human capital formation and risk management, while economic services shape access to markets. The analysis presented in this report does not pretend to be exhaustive of decentralized service delivery for the poor. Important areas for future research include the following: (i) analysis of the compliance of the law or of the detail regulations in programs; (ii) systematic comparisons of state interventions in the sectors analyzed in this report; (iii) analysis of the implications and requirements to implement per capita funding in health and education, and freedom to choose providers; and (iv) systematic compilation of information at the state and municipal level on the performance of the programs.Publication Philippines : Basic Education Public Expenditure Review(World Bank, Pasig City, Philippines, 2012)The 2010 Philippines Basic Education Public Expenditure Review (BEPER) provides an overview of public expenditures and outcomes in the basic education sector since 2000. The PER team intends this analysis to assist the Department of Education (DepED) in setting policy priorities and in making decisions on resource allocation, utilization, and management. In this review, we analyze trends in education performance as they relate to the Philippines' Education for All (EFA) goals and the objectives of the Basic Education Sector Reform Agenda (BESRA). The analysis traces trends in government spending and their impact on basic education inputs and outcomes. It also examines the equity dimensions of the education outcomes and spending across geographic areas, households of different income levels, and gender. It examine in detail the processes for executing DepED's priority programs such as the provision of new teaching posts, school buildings, furniture, and textbooks, and we identify potential bottlenecks that slow implementation. Although the Government of the Philippines has committed to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and EFA goals by 2015, its level of investment in basic education is not sufficient for realizing these commitments. The PER analysis suggests that although the basic education sector needs additional resources for rapidly expanding the supply of key inputs for quality education services, unless efforts are intensified to improve budget execution and even if resources were available, merely increasing allocation would be unlikely to result in actual increases in the larger number of critical inputs and their efficient deployment.Publication School Access, Resources, and Learning Outcomes(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2011-05)This study reports evidence from an unusual policy intervention- The Reaching Out of School Children (ROSC) project in Bangladesh where school grants and education allowances are offered to attract hard-to-reach children to schools comprised of a single teacher and a classroom. The operating unit cost of these schools is a fraction of that of formal primary schools. Panel data is used to investigate whether ROSC schools are effective in raising enrolment and learning outcomes. The findings suggest that there is a modest impact on school participation: ROSC schools increase enrolment probability between 9 and 18 percent for children in the two age cohorts 6 to 8 and 6 to 10. They perform as well as non-ROSC schools in terms of raising test scores, and even have positive impacts on academically stronger students. There is also strong evidence of positive externalities on non-ROSC schools in program areas. These results point to the effectiveness of a new model of non-formal primary schools that can be replicated in similar settings. This paper consists of following sections: section one gives introduction. The context for the country and the program description is provided in section two, and the data is described in section three. The impacts of the ROSC project on education outcomes as measured by student enrolment and test scores are discussed in section four and other program effects are considered in section five, with the empirical estimation frameworks being respectively detailed in each section. The relative efficiency of ROSC schools versus non-ROSC schools is discussed in section six and section seven gives conclusion.Publication Absenteeism and Beyond : Instructional Time Loss and Consequences(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-10)Studies have shown that learning outcomes are related to the amount of time students engage in learning tasks. However, visits to schools have revealed that students are often taught for only a fraction of the intended time, particularly in lower-income countries. Losses are due to informal school closures, teacher absenteeism, delays, early departures, and sub-optimal use of time in the classroom. A study was undertaken to develop an efficient methodology for measuring instructional time loss. Thus, instructional time use was measured in sampled schools in Tunisia, Morocco, Ghana, and the Brazilian state of Pernambuco. The percentage of time that students were engaged in learning vis-à-vis government expectations was approximately 39 percent in Ghana, 63 percent in Pernambuco, 71 percent in Morocco, and 78 percent in Tunisia. Instructional time use is a mediator variable that is challenging to measure, so it often escapes scrutiny. Research suggests that merely financing the ingredients of instruction is not enough to produce learning outcomes; students must also get sufficient time to process the information. The quantity-quality tradeoff that often accompanies large-scale enrollments may be partly due to instructional time restrictions. Time wastage also distorts budgetary outlays and teacher salary rates. To achieve the Millennium Development Goals students must get more of the time that governments, donors, and parents pay for.Publication Incentives and Teacher Effort : Further Evidence from a Developing Country(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-11)Few would contest that teachers are a very important determinant of whether students learn in school. Yet, in the face of compelling evidence that many students are not learning what they are expected to learn, how to improve teacher performance has been the focus of much policy debate in rich and poor countries. This paper examines how incentives, both pecuniary and non-pecuniary, influence teacher effort. Using school survey data from Lao PDR, it estimates new measures of teacher effort, including the number of hours that teachers spend preparing for classes and teacher provision of private tutoring classes outside class hours. The estimation results indicate that teachers increase effort in response to non-pecuniary incentives, such as greater teacher autonomy over teaching materials, and monitoring mechanism, such as the existence of an active parent-teacher association and the ability of school principals to dismiss teachers. Methodologically, the paper provides a detailed derivation of a simultaneous ordinary least squares-probit model with school random effects that can jointly estimate teacher work hours and tutoring provision.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Classroom Assessment to Support Foundational Literacy(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-21)This document focuses primarily on how classroom assessment activities can measure students’ literacy skills as they progress along a learning trajectory towards reading fluently and with comprehension by the end of primary school grades. The document addresses considerations regarding the design and implementation of early grade reading classroom assessment, provides examples of assessment activities from a variety of countries and contexts, and discusses the importance of incorporating classroom assessment practices into teacher training and professional development opportunities for teachers. The structure of the document is as follows. The first section presents definitions and addresses basic questions on classroom assessment. Section 2 covers the intersection between assessment and early grade reading by discussing how learning assessment can measure early grade reading skills following the reading learning trajectory. Section 3 compares some of the most common early grade literacy assessment tools with respect to the early grade reading skills and developmental phases. Section 4 of the document addresses teacher training considerations in developing, scoring, and using early grade reading assessment. Additional issues in assessing reading skills in the classroom and using assessment results to improve teaching and learning are reviewed in section 5. Throughout the document, country cases are presented to demonstrate how assessment activities can be implemented in the classroom in different contexts.Publication Guide to the Debt Management Performance Assessment Tool(Washington, DC, 2008-02-05)The purpose of this document is to provide guidance and supplemental information to assist with country assessments of debt management performance, using the Debt Management Performance Assessment (DeMPA) tool. The DeMPA is a methodology used for assessing public debt management performance through a comprehensive set of 15 performance indicators spanning the full range of government Debt Management (DeM) functions. It is based on the principles set out in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank guidelines for public debt management, initially published in 2001 and updated in 2003. It is modeled after the Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) framework for performance measurement of public financial management. The DeMPA has been designed to be a user-friendly tool to undertake an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses in government DeM practices. This guide provides additional background and supporting information so that a no specialist in the area of debt management may undertake a country assessment effectively. The guide can be used by assessors in preparing for and undertaking an assessment. It is particularly useful for understanding the rationale for the inclusion of the indicators, the scoring methodology, and the list of supporting documents or evidence required, and the questions that could be asked for the assessment.Publication Argentina Country Climate and Development Report(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-11)The Argentina Country Climate and Development Report (CCDR) explores opportunities and identifies trade-offs for aligning Argentina’s growth and poverty reduction policies with its commitments on, and its ability to withstand, climate change. It assesses how the country can: reduce its vulnerability to climate shocks through targeted public and private investments and adequation of social protection. The report also shows how Argentina can seize the benefits of a global decarbonization path to sustain a more robust economic growth through further development of Argentina’s potential for renewable energy, energy efficiency actions, the lithium value chain, as well as climate-smart agriculture (and land use) options. Given Argentina’s context, this CCDR focuses on win-win policies and investments, which have large co-benefits or can contribute to raising the country’s growth while helping to adapt the economy, also considering how human capital actions can accompany a just transition.Publication The Mexican Social Protection System in Health(World Bank, Washington DC, 2013-01)With a population of 113 million and a per-capita Gross Domestic Product, or GDP of US$10,064 (current U.S. dollars), Mexico is one of the largest and highest-income countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). The country has benefited from sustained economic growth during the last decade, which was temporarily interrupted by the financial and economic crisis. Real GDP is projected to grow 3.8 percent and 3.6 percent in 2012 and 2013, respectively (International Monetary Fund, or IMF 2012). Despite this growth, poverty in the country remains high; with half of the population living below the national poverty line. The country is also highly heterogeneous, with large socioeconomic differences across states and across urban and rural areas. In 2010, while the extreme poverty ratio in the Federal District and the states of Colima and Nuevo Leon was below 3 percent, in Chiapas, Guerrero, and Oaxaca it was 25 percent or higher. These large regional differences are also found in other indicators of well-being, such as years of schooling, housing conditions, and access to social services. This case study assesses key features and achievements of the Social Protection System in Health (Sistema de Proteccion Social en Salud) in Mexico, and particularly of its main pillar, Popular Health Insurance (Seguro Popular, PHI). It analyzes the contribution of this policy to the establishment and implementation of universal health coverage in Mexico. In 2003, with the reform of the General Health Law, the PHI was institutionalized as a subsidized health insurance scheme open to the population not covered by the social security schemes. Today, the PHI covers all of its intended affiliates, about 52 million peoplePublication Crime and Violence in Central America : A Development Challenge - Main Report(World Bank, 2011-01-01)Crime and violence are now a key development issue for Central American countries. In three nations El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras crime rates are among the top five in Latin America. This report argues that successful strategies require actions along multiple fronts, combining prevention and criminal justice reform, together with regional approaches in the areas of drug trafficking and firearms. It also argues that interventions should be evidence based, starting with a clear understanding of the risk factors involved and ending with a careful evaluation of how any planned action might affect future options. In addition, the design of national crime reduction plans and the establishment of national cross-sectoral crime commissions are important steps to coordinate the actions of different government branches, ease cross-sectoral collaboration and prioritize resource allocation. Of equal importance is the fact that national plans offer a vehicle for the involvement of civil society organizations, in which much of the expertise in violence prevention and rehabilitation resides. Prevention efforts need to be complemented by effective law enforcement. The required reforms are no longer primarily legislative in nature because all six countries have advanced toward more transparent adversarial criminal procedures. The second-generation reforms should instead help deliver on the promises of previous reforms by: (i) strengthening key institutions and improving the quality and timeliness of the services they provide to citizens; (ii) improving efficiency and effectiveness while respecting due process and human rights; (iii) ensuring accountability and addressing corruption; (iv) increasing inter-agency collaboration; and (v) improving access to justice, especially for poor and disenfranchised groups. Specific interventions reviewed in the report include: information systems and performance indicators as a prerequisite to improve inter-institutional coordination and information sharing mechanisms; an internal overhaul of court administration and case management to create rapid reaction, one-stop shops; the strengthening of entities that provide legal counseling to the poor and to women; and the promotion of alternative dispute-resolution mechanisms and the implementation of community policing programs.