Vietnam enjoyed rapid economic growth and a sharp reduction in child stunting in the 1990s. Econo... more Vietnam enjoyed rapid economic growth and a sharp reduction in child stunting in the 1990s. Economic growth can increase children's nutritional status in two ways. First, by raising household incomes, which can be used it to purchase more food, medicine and medical services. Second, by raising government revenue, which can be used to improve publicly provided medical services. This paper
This paper compares retrospective and prospective analyses of the effect of flip charts on test s... more This paper compares retrospective and prospective analyses of the effect of flip charts on test scores in rural Kenyan schools. Retrospective estimates suggest that flip charts raise test scores by up to 20% of a standard deviation. Yet prospective estimators based on a randomized trial provide no evidence that flip charts increase test scores. One interpretation is that the retrospective
We would like to thank Gary Fields and Andrew Foster for useful discussion and comments. The find... more We would like to thank Gary Fields and Andrew Foster for useful discussion and comments. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the World Bank, its Executive ...
Economic Studies on Food, Agriculture, and the Environment, 2002
Child malnutrition is pervasive in almost every developing country. Economic growth can lead to b... more Child malnutrition is pervasive in almost every developing country. Economic growth can lead to better child nutrition, but the size and nature of this effect can vary widely across countries. This first part of this paper examines the impact of increased household income on children's nutritional status on Vietnam, a country with a high rate of economic growth in the
Abstract-This paper investigates why children in low income countries often delay primary school ... more Abstract-This paper investigates why children in low income countries often delay primary school enrollment, despite the prediction of human capital theory that schooling will begin at the earliest possible age. We explore several explanations for delayed enrollment, but focus on the ...
Many children younger than 5 years in developing countries are exposed to multiple risks, includi... more Many children younger than 5 years in developing countries are exposed to multiple risks, including poverty, malnutrition, poor health, and unstimulating home environments, which detrimentally affect their cognitive, motor, and social-emotional development. There are few national statistics on the development of young children in developing countries. We therefore identified two factors with available worldwide data-the prevalence of early childhood stunting and the number of people living in absolute poverty-to use as indicators of poor development. We show that both indicators are closely associated with poor cognitive and educational performance in children and use them to estimate that over 200 million children under 5 years are not fulfilling their developmental potential. Most of these children live in south Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. These disadvantaged children are likely to do poorly in school and subsequently have low incomes, high fertility, and provide poor care for their children, thus contributing to the intergenerational transmission of poverty.
ABSTRACT In this paper we present new evidence on the impact of school character-istics on studen... more ABSTRACT In this paper we present new evidence on the impact of school character-istics on student achievement using an unusually rich data set from Ghana. We deal with two potentially important selectivity issues in the developing country context: the sorting of higher ability ...
Which socio-economic groups are most vulnerable to welfare declines during a macroe- conomic shoc... more Which socio-economic groups are most vulnerable to welfare declines during a macroe- conomic shock? After clarifying the difference between poverty and vulnerability, this paper presents an analytical framework and applies it ...
Human capital investment in developing countries is thought to be significantly constrained by ho... more Human capital investment in developing countries is thought to be significantly constrained by household resources. This paper studies the relationship between household resources and the demand for education using recent household survey data from Vietnam. The data cover a period, 1993 -1998, of exceptional income growth in Vietnam, during which secondary school enrollment rose substantially. Using consumption expenditures to measure household wealth, we find a positive and significant relationship between changes in wealth and changes in the demand for education. This wealth effect persists even after controlling for locality-specific factors such as changes in education returns and the supply and quality of schools, and for the opportunity costs of schooling. D
This paper compares retrospective and prospective analyses of the effect of flip charts on test s... more This paper compares retrospective and prospective analyses of the effect of flip charts on test scores in rural Kenyan schools. Retrospective estimates that focus on subjects for which flip charts are used suggest that flip charts raise test scores by up to 20 percent of a standard deviation. Controlling for other educational inputs does not reduce this estimate. In contrast, prospective estimators based on a study of 178 schools, half of which were randomly selected to receive charts, provide no evidence that flip charts increase test scores. These results suggest that the retrospective results were subject to omitted variable bias despite the inclusion of control variables. If the direction of omitted variable bias were similar in other retrospective analyses of educational inputs in developing countries, the effects of inputs may be even more modest then these studies suggest. Bias appears to be reduced by a differences-in-differences estimator that examines the impact of flip charts on the relative performance of students in flip chart and other subjects across schools with and without flip charts, but it is not clear that this approach is applicable more generally.
One of the eight Millennium Development Goals is that all children in developing countries should... more One of the eight Millennium Development Goals is that all children in developing countries should complete primary education. Much progress has been made toward this goal, but completing primary school does not ensure that students have attained basic literacy and numeracy skills. Indeed, there is ample evidence that many children in developing countries are not learning these skills despite years of school attendance. This raises the question: What can schools and communities do to increase the learning that takes place in schools? Sri Lanka exemplifies these issues. It has achieved universal primary completion, but many Sri Lankan primary school students perform poorly on academic tests. This paper uses an unusually rich data set from Sri Lanka to investigate the determinants of academic performance (as measured by cognitive achievement tests) of grade 4 Sri Lankan students. At the child and household level, educated parents, better nutrition, high daily attendance, enrollment in private tutoring classes, exercise books. and electric lighting and children's books at home all increase learning, while hearing problems have a strong negative effect. Among school variables, principals' and teachers' years of experience, collaborating with other schools in a "school family", and meetings between parents and teachers all have positive impacts on students' test scores. A final section provides recommendations for education policies in Sri Lanka.
About 10% of primary school students in developing countries have poor vision, but very few of th... more About 10% of primary school students in developing countries have poor vision, but very few of them wear glasses. Almost no research examines the impact of poor vision on school performance, and simple OLS estimates are likely to be biased because studying harder often adversely affect one’s vision. This paper presents results from a randomized trial in Western China that offered free eyeglasses to 1,528 rural primary school students. The results indicate that wearing eyeglasses for one year increased average test scores of students with poor vision by 0.15 to 0.22 standard deviations, equivalent to the learning acquired from an additional 0.33-0.50 years of schooling, and that the benefits are greater for under-performing students. A simple cost-benefit analysis suggests very high economic returns to wearing eyeglasses, raising the question of why such investments are not made by most families. We find that girls are more likely to refuse free eyeglasses, and that lack of parental awareness of vision problems, mothers’ education, and economic factors (expenditures per capita and price) significantly affect whether children wear eyeglasses in the absence of the intervention.
This paper examines the impacts of rising food prices on poverty and welfare in Vietnam. Increase... more This paper examines the impacts of rising food prices on poverty and welfare in Vietnam. Increases in prices of food raise the real incomes of those selling food, but make net food purchasers worse off. Overall, the net impacts on an average Vietnamese household's welfare are positive. However, the benefits and costs are not spread evenly across the population. A majority of the population would be worse-off from increases in food prices. A uniform increase in both food consumer and producer prices would make 56 percent of households be worse off. Similarly, a uniform increase in the price of rice would reduce the welfare of about 54 percent of rural households and about 92 percent of urban households. The reason why average household welfare increases is that the average welfare losses of the households whose welfare declines (net consumers) are smaller than the average welfare gains of the households that benefit (net producers). With relative small change in food price, the poverty rate declines slightly because poorer households in Vietnam tend to be net producers. However, if price increase is large, for example at 50 percent, poverty rates may increase.
About 80% of the world's children live in developing countries. Their well-being as adults d... more About 80% of the world's children live in developing countries. Their well-being as adults depends heavily on the education they receive. School enrollment rates have increased dramatically in developing counties since 1960, but many children still leave school at a young age and ...
Vietnam enjoyed rapid economic growth and a sharp reduction in child stunting in the 1990s. Econo... more Vietnam enjoyed rapid economic growth and a sharp reduction in child stunting in the 1990s. Economic growth can increase children's nutritional status in two ways. First, by raising household incomes, which can be used it to purchase more food, medicine and medical services. Second, by raising government revenue, which can be used to improve publicly provided medical services. This paper
This paper compares retrospective and prospective analyses of the effect of flip charts on test s... more This paper compares retrospective and prospective analyses of the effect of flip charts on test scores in rural Kenyan schools. Retrospective estimates suggest that flip charts raise test scores by up to 20% of a standard deviation. Yet prospective estimators based on a randomized trial provide no evidence that flip charts increase test scores. One interpretation is that the retrospective
We would like to thank Gary Fields and Andrew Foster for useful discussion and comments. The find... more We would like to thank Gary Fields and Andrew Foster for useful discussion and comments. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the World Bank, its Executive ...
Economic Studies on Food, Agriculture, and the Environment, 2002
Child malnutrition is pervasive in almost every developing country. Economic growth can lead to b... more Child malnutrition is pervasive in almost every developing country. Economic growth can lead to better child nutrition, but the size and nature of this effect can vary widely across countries. This first part of this paper examines the impact of increased household income on children's nutritional status on Vietnam, a country with a high rate of economic growth in the
Abstract-This paper investigates why children in low income countries often delay primary school ... more Abstract-This paper investigates why children in low income countries often delay primary school enrollment, despite the prediction of human capital theory that schooling will begin at the earliest possible age. We explore several explanations for delayed enrollment, but focus on the ...
Many children younger than 5 years in developing countries are exposed to multiple risks, includi... more Many children younger than 5 years in developing countries are exposed to multiple risks, including poverty, malnutrition, poor health, and unstimulating home environments, which detrimentally affect their cognitive, motor, and social-emotional development. There are few national statistics on the development of young children in developing countries. We therefore identified two factors with available worldwide data-the prevalence of early childhood stunting and the number of people living in absolute poverty-to use as indicators of poor development. We show that both indicators are closely associated with poor cognitive and educational performance in children and use them to estimate that over 200 million children under 5 years are not fulfilling their developmental potential. Most of these children live in south Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. These disadvantaged children are likely to do poorly in school and subsequently have low incomes, high fertility, and provide poor care for their children, thus contributing to the intergenerational transmission of poverty.
ABSTRACT In this paper we present new evidence on the impact of school character-istics on studen... more ABSTRACT In this paper we present new evidence on the impact of school character-istics on student achievement using an unusually rich data set from Ghana. We deal with two potentially important selectivity issues in the developing country context: the sorting of higher ability ...
Which socio-economic groups are most vulnerable to welfare declines during a macroe- conomic shoc... more Which socio-economic groups are most vulnerable to welfare declines during a macroe- conomic shock? After clarifying the difference between poverty and vulnerability, this paper presents an analytical framework and applies it ...
Human capital investment in developing countries is thought to be significantly constrained by ho... more Human capital investment in developing countries is thought to be significantly constrained by household resources. This paper studies the relationship between household resources and the demand for education using recent household survey data from Vietnam. The data cover a period, 1993 -1998, of exceptional income growth in Vietnam, during which secondary school enrollment rose substantially. Using consumption expenditures to measure household wealth, we find a positive and significant relationship between changes in wealth and changes in the demand for education. This wealth effect persists even after controlling for locality-specific factors such as changes in education returns and the supply and quality of schools, and for the opportunity costs of schooling. D
This paper compares retrospective and prospective analyses of the effect of flip charts on test s... more This paper compares retrospective and prospective analyses of the effect of flip charts on test scores in rural Kenyan schools. Retrospective estimates that focus on subjects for which flip charts are used suggest that flip charts raise test scores by up to 20 percent of a standard deviation. Controlling for other educational inputs does not reduce this estimate. In contrast, prospective estimators based on a study of 178 schools, half of which were randomly selected to receive charts, provide no evidence that flip charts increase test scores. These results suggest that the retrospective results were subject to omitted variable bias despite the inclusion of control variables. If the direction of omitted variable bias were similar in other retrospective analyses of educational inputs in developing countries, the effects of inputs may be even more modest then these studies suggest. Bias appears to be reduced by a differences-in-differences estimator that examines the impact of flip charts on the relative performance of students in flip chart and other subjects across schools with and without flip charts, but it is not clear that this approach is applicable more generally.
One of the eight Millennium Development Goals is that all children in developing countries should... more One of the eight Millennium Development Goals is that all children in developing countries should complete primary education. Much progress has been made toward this goal, but completing primary school does not ensure that students have attained basic literacy and numeracy skills. Indeed, there is ample evidence that many children in developing countries are not learning these skills despite years of school attendance. This raises the question: What can schools and communities do to increase the learning that takes place in schools? Sri Lanka exemplifies these issues. It has achieved universal primary completion, but many Sri Lankan primary school students perform poorly on academic tests. This paper uses an unusually rich data set from Sri Lanka to investigate the determinants of academic performance (as measured by cognitive achievement tests) of grade 4 Sri Lankan students. At the child and household level, educated parents, better nutrition, high daily attendance, enrollment in private tutoring classes, exercise books. and electric lighting and children's books at home all increase learning, while hearing problems have a strong negative effect. Among school variables, principals' and teachers' years of experience, collaborating with other schools in a "school family", and meetings between parents and teachers all have positive impacts on students' test scores. A final section provides recommendations for education policies in Sri Lanka.
About 10% of primary school students in developing countries have poor vision, but very few of th... more About 10% of primary school students in developing countries have poor vision, but very few of them wear glasses. Almost no research examines the impact of poor vision on school performance, and simple OLS estimates are likely to be biased because studying harder often adversely affect one’s vision. This paper presents results from a randomized trial in Western China that offered free eyeglasses to 1,528 rural primary school students. The results indicate that wearing eyeglasses for one year increased average test scores of students with poor vision by 0.15 to 0.22 standard deviations, equivalent to the learning acquired from an additional 0.33-0.50 years of schooling, and that the benefits are greater for under-performing students. A simple cost-benefit analysis suggests very high economic returns to wearing eyeglasses, raising the question of why such investments are not made by most families. We find that girls are more likely to refuse free eyeglasses, and that lack of parental awareness of vision problems, mothers’ education, and economic factors (expenditures per capita and price) significantly affect whether children wear eyeglasses in the absence of the intervention.
This paper examines the impacts of rising food prices on poverty and welfare in Vietnam. Increase... more This paper examines the impacts of rising food prices on poverty and welfare in Vietnam. Increases in prices of food raise the real incomes of those selling food, but make net food purchasers worse off. Overall, the net impacts on an average Vietnamese household's welfare are positive. However, the benefits and costs are not spread evenly across the population. A majority of the population would be worse-off from increases in food prices. A uniform increase in both food consumer and producer prices would make 56 percent of households be worse off. Similarly, a uniform increase in the price of rice would reduce the welfare of about 54 percent of rural households and about 92 percent of urban households. The reason why average household welfare increases is that the average welfare losses of the households whose welfare declines (net consumers) are smaller than the average welfare gains of the households that benefit (net producers). With relative small change in food price, the poverty rate declines slightly because poorer households in Vietnam tend to be net producers. However, if price increase is large, for example at 50 percent, poverty rates may increase.
About 80% of the world's children live in developing countries. Their well-being as adults d... more About 80% of the world's children live in developing countries. Their well-being as adults depends heavily on the education they receive. School enrollment rates have increased dramatically in developing counties since 1960, but many children still leave school at a young age and ...
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