TABLE OF CONTENTS
Overview of Education Issues in Developing Countries - Paul Glewwe
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226078854.003.0001
[Education, developing countries, education policy, chapter summaries]
Economists and other researchers, as well as most policymakers in developing countries, agree that there are important benefits from increasing the education of the populations in those countries. Indeed, governments in developing countries spend about $700 billion each year on education. Despite this spending, 13% of children in developing countries do not finish primary school, over one third do not enroll in secondary school, and students in developing countries learn far less than students in developed countries. Thus there is an urgent need to find policies that will improve education outcomes in those countries. This volume takes stock of what recent research has found, presents the implications of this research for education policies in developing countries, and sets priorities for future research on education in those countries. This chapter lays out the broad issues, and highlights some of the most important findings in the remaining chapters of this book. (pages 1 - 12)
This chapter is available at:
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School Resources and Educational Outcomes in Developing Countries: A Review of the Literature from 1990 to 2010 - Paul Glewwe, Eric A. Hanushek, Sarah Humpage, Renato Ravina
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226078854.003.0002
[Education, developing countries, years of schooling, time in school, student learning, school characteristics, teacher characteristics]
Developing countries spend hundreds of billions of dollars each year on schools, materials and teachers, but it is unclear how effective these expenditures are at increasing students’ years of schooling and the skills they learn. This chapter examines studies published between 1990 and 2010, in both the education and economics literatures, to investigate which school and teacher characteristics have strong positive impacts on learning and time in school. Out of 9,000 studies, 79 are selected as having sufficient quality, and setting higher bar in terms of econometric methodology yields 43 “high quality” studies. Results are also shown for 13 randomized trials. The estimated impacts on time in school and learning of most school and teacher characteristics are statistically insignificant, especially for “high quality” studies. The few variables with significant effects – availability of desks, teachers’ subject knowledge, and teacher absence – are unsurprising and thus provide little policy guidance. (pages 13 - 64)
This chapter is available at:
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Preschool Programs in Developing Countries - Jere R. Behrman, Patrice Engle, Lia Fernald
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226078854.003.0003
[Education, developing countries, early childhood development, preschools, early childhood investments]
Many studies conclude that early childhood development (ECD) investments have high returns in developing and developed countries. ECD investments promote health and nutrition, provide learning opportunities, and protect from risks such as violence or abandonment. Yet some observers claim that ECD investments in developing countries are too low. This chapter reviews what is known about one type of ECD investment, preschools for children 3-5 years. “Preschools” refers to any organized early learning group that meets regularly for at least 2 hours per week. Preschool enrollments have increased substantially in developing countries over the past several decades, yet little is known about the economic justification for preschool or other ECD programs in those countries. This chapter summarizes what is known about preschool program impacts and discusses the resource costs of preschools. Finally, it summarizes the knowledge gaps and proposes how to better evaluate what works best for developing country preschool programs. (pages 65 - 106)
This chapter is available at:
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Child Health and Educational Outcomes - Harold Alderman, Hoyt Bleakley
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226078854.003.0004
[Education, human capital, developing countries, childhood health, childhood malnutrition, parasitical diseases]
Many developing countries have made significant progress in reducing childhood mortality, yet malnutrition and childhood infections still diminish the future of millions of children. Even if a person is healthy in adulthood, damage from childhood disease and malnutrition can be hard to undo. This chapter reviews evidence that links childhood health to education and human capital formation, focusing on malnutrition and parasitical infections. Policymakers should focus on the amount of learning that takes place in school rather than merely increasing enrollment; better child health can help along this dimension. Inputs to child health are likely to be underprovided for many reasons: diseases are canonical examples of externalities, and parents may under-invest in their children’s early-life nutrition because of imperfect altruism, credit constraints, or simple ignorance. A final advantage of improving childhood health is that it disproportionately benefits the poor, making societies more equitable. (pages 107 - 136)
This chapter is available at:
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Incentives for Students and Parents - Jere R. Behrman, Susan W. Parker, Petra E. Todd
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226078854.003.0005
[Education, developing countries, student incentives, parent incentives, conditional cash transfers, test-based incentives, school vouchers, food-for-education programs]
Incentive programs for students and parents that promote education are increasingly common in developing countries. This chapter reviews what is known about the effectiveness of incentive programs aimed at improving educational outcomes. Most of the literature on incentives for students and parents analyzes incentives for school enrollment, school attendance, grade repetition and completed years of schooling, rather than skills learned by students. Estimating the impacts of educational incentives for students and parents is challenging, because they may depend on the behavioral responses of children, parents, teachers, and school administrators, and because there are potentially important, unobserved factors, such as student, teacher and parental abilities and preferences. This chapter surveys programs that provide educational incentives to parents and students, focusing on K-12 schooling. It focuses on the following programs: the schooling component of conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs; incentives conditional on test performance; school vouchers; and food-for-education (FFE) programs. (pages 137 - 192)
This chapter is available at:
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School Management in Developing Countries - Sebastian Galiani, Ricardo Perez-Truglia
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226078854.003.0006
[Education, developing countries, school management, decentralization, tracking, teacher incentives, contract teachers]
This chapter reviews recent empirical evaluations of three school-management interventions: school decentralization, tracking and teacher incentives. It provides stylized models to organize the discussion of the results. It considers the average and distributional effects of the policies and stresses the possible importance of complementary interventions aimed at reducing inequality when the programs are cost-effective but engender greater benefits to the best students. The results are compared across non-experimental, quasi-experimental and experimental studies, and argue, not surprisingly, that a solid identification strategy is critical to getting the policy recommendations right. Finally, the chapter identifies some unresolved issues that future research should address. (pages 193 - 242)
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Competition and Educational Productivity: Incentives Writ Large - W. Bentley MacLeod, Miguel Urquiola
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226078854.003.0007
[Education, developing countries, competition, educational productivity, incentives, private schools, contract theory, market design]
Friedman (1962) suggested that unfettered markets generally ensure efficient provision of goods and services. Applying this logic to education, he recommended that students be provided vouchers to purchase schooling in a free market. Hoxby (2002) agrees, and suggests that more choice increases school productivity. This chapter discusses the evidence in this area, concluding that competition has more mixed and modest impact than expected. This should not be surprising, since economic theory on incentives and incomplete contracts (beginning with contributions from the 1950s) leads to more nuanced expectations. An examination of the incentives faced by schools, parents, and students yields predictions that are broadly consistent with the evidence, and suggests little reason to expect that school choice will dramatically improve test scores. The chapter describes a simple model that illustrates this point and implies that elements of market design might be necessary to ensure that competition enhances educational performance. (pages 243 - 284)
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Comparative Cost-Effectiveness Analysis to Inform Policy in Developing Countries: A General Framework with Applications for Education - Iqbal Dhaliwal, Esther Duflo, Rachel Glennerster, Caitlin Tulloch
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226078854.003.0008
[Education, developing countries, cost-effectiveness, cost analysis, impact evaluations, education policy, public policy]
This chapter discusses how comparative cost-effectiveness analyses can help inform policy in developing countries and the underlying methodological assumptions necessary for performing this kind of analysis. The chapter does not suggest a single set of “correct” assumptions, because the assumptions adopted in a cost-effectiveness analysis should reflect the perspective of the intended user. Rather, it discusses the issues surrounding many of these assumptions, such as what discount rate to use or whether to include cash transfers as program costs, and make recommendations on which assumptions might be reasonable given the perspective of a policymaker allocating resources between different projects. Examples are drawn from the education field to illustrate key issues and focus on specific applications to education. The hope is that this chapter will contribute to the development of a more standard methodology for cost-effectiveness analyses and a better understanding of how these analyses can be created and used. (pages 285 - 338)
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