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on Education |
| By: | Luiz de Mello; Mombert Hoppe |
| Abstract: | For many years, Brazil lagged behind other middle-income countries in terms of school enrolment rates. But since 1998 policies have aimed at bridging this gap, in particular, with the implementation of FUNDEF, a fund for financing sub-national spending on primary and lower-secondary education. Using state- and municipality-level data during 1991-2002, this paper shows that FUNDEF played a key role in the increase in enrolment rates over the period, particularly in small municipalities, which rely more heavily on transfers from higher levels of government as a source of revenue. These findings underscore the importance of FUNDEF in eliminating supply constraints to the improvement of education attainment. Enrolment rates are now nearly universal for primary and lower-secondary education. Emphasis should therefore be placed on policies to improve the quality of services and to remove supply constraints to the expansion of enrolment in upper-secondary and tertiary education. <p> Les taux d'inscription scolaire au Brésil: l'expérience de FUNDEF <p> Pendant de nombreuses années, les taux d'inscription scolaire au Brésil sont restés derrière ceux des pays à revenu moyen. Mais depuis 1998 des politiques ont visé à réduire cet écart, en particulier, avec la mise en place de FUNDEF, un fonds pour financer la dépense de l'éducation du primaire et du premier cycle du secondaire au niveau local. En utilisant des données au niveau des états et des municipalités de 1991 à 2002, cet article montre que FUNDEF a joué un rôle majeur dans l'augmentation des taux d'inscription au cours de la période, en particulier dans les petites municipalités, qui dépendent plus fortement des transferts à partir des niveaux plus élevés d’administration comme source de revenu. Ces résultats soulignent l'importance de FUNDEF en éliminant les contraintes d’offre liées à l'amélioration des résultats d'éducation. Les taux d'inscription sont maintenant presque universels pour l'éducation du primaire et du premier cycle du secondaire. L'accent devrait donc être mis sur des politiques pour améliorer la qualité des services et pour enlever des contraintes d’offre sur l'expansion de l'inscription dans l'enseignement du deuxième cycle du secondaire et du tertiaire. |
| Keywords: | Brazil; education; school enrolment; decentralisation |
| JEL: | H52 H72 H77 |
| Date: | 2005–04–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oed:oecdec:424&r=edu |
| By: | Elisabeth Sadoulet (University of California, Berkeley); Alain de Janvry (University of California, Berkeley) |
| Abstract: | Using grants programs to induce poor parents to send their children to school has received considerable attention as an instrument to break the inheritance of poverty. Yet, the cost of these programs tends to be quite high so that increasing their efficiency is an important issue that needs to be researched. We use the educational component of Progresa in Mexico to explore alternative targeting and calibrating schemes to achieve this purpose. We show that targeting on risk of nonenrollment instead of targeting on poverty, as currently done, would be implementable and create huge efficiency gains. To start with, this would concentrate grants on secondary school since attendance to primary school is virtually universal, saving 55% of the educational budget. Targeting the population most likely to drop out of school upon completing primary and allowing for variable transfers across beneficiaries would result in a 72% efficiency gain for that cohort over targeting on poverty and making uniform transfers by gender, reducing leakage cost from 85% to 53% of the budget. Even restricting transfers to be uniform across beneficiaries but set at the optimal level would achieve a 65% efficiency gain. However, to make the scheme easy to implement, only observable, transparent, and non-manipulable indicators of risk should be used and discrete levels of transfers offered. This would still result in a 53% efficiency gain over the current scheme. |
| Keywords: | children, education, grants-in-aid, rural poverty, |
| Date: | 2003–07–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:agrebk:1074&r=edu |
| By: | Melanie Raymond (Economic Studies and Policy Analysis Division, Department of Finance, Canada); Elisabeth Sadoulet (University of California, Berkeley) |
| Abstract: | The present work assesses the effectiveness of educational grants at raising schooling attainment of poor children in rural areas. The per grade gains in reducing drop outs cumulate in an additional half a year in total schooling. Progressive impacts are found along three dimensions: degree of poverty, parents' education and distance to school. The children of uneducated fathers living far from school gain twice as much as their counterparts with an educated father or close to a school. The intervention successfully closes the schooling gap along the wealth dimension but falls short of achieving the same in the other dimensions of parents' education and school distance. |
| Keywords: | children, education, rural poverty, |
| Date: | 2003–05–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:agrebk:1075&r=edu |
| By: | van der Klaauw, Bas (Free University Amsterdam); van Vuuren, Aico (Free University Amsterdam); Berkhout, Peter (University of Amsterdam) |
| Abstract: | In this paper we develop a structural model for job search behavior of students entering the labor market. The model includes endogenous search effort and on the job search. Since students usually do not start a regular job before graduation but start job search earlier, our model is not stationary. The model explains the common finding that a substantial share of individuals starts working immediately upon graduation. We estimate the model using a unique data set of individuals who completed undergraduate education in the Netherlands between 1995 and 2001. Our estimation results show that 1 percentage point decrease in unemployment rate increases wage offers on average with 3 percent and that there are substantial returns to work experience. Employment rates at graduation could be increased from 40 percent to 65 percent if alls students start job search 6 months prior to graduation. |
| Keywords: | Job search behavior; structural model |
| JEL: | J64 |
| Date: | 2005–04–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2005_009&r=edu |
| By: | Raquel Fernandez; Alessandra Fogli |
| Abstract: | We study the effect of culture on important economic outcomes by using the 1970 Census to examine the work and fertility behavior of women 30-40 years old, born in the U.S., but whose parents were born elsewhere. We use past female labor force participation and total fertility rates from the country of ancestry as our cultural proxies. These variables should capture, in addition to past economic and institutional conditions, the beliefs commonly held about the role of women in society, i.e. culture. Given the different time and place, only the beliefs embodied in the cultural proxies should be potentially relevant to women's behavior in the US in 1970. We show that these cultural proxies have positive and significant explanatory power for individual work and fertility outcomes, even after controlling for possible indirect effects of culture (e.g., education and spousal characteristics). We examine alternative hypotheses for these positive correlations and show that neither unobserved human capital nor networks are likely to be responsible. We also show that the effect of these cultural proxies is amplified the greater is the tendency for ethnic groups to cluster in the same neighborhoods. |
| JEL: | J13 J21 Z10 |
| Date: | 2005–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11268&r=edu |