|
on Education |
| By: | Rapopor t, Hillel; McKenzie, David |
| Abstract: | The authors examine the impact of migration on educational attainment in rural Mexico. Using historical migration rates by state to instrument for current migration, they find evidence of a significant negative effect of migration on schooling attendance and attainment of 12 to 18 year-old boys and 16 to 18 year-old girls. IV-Censored Ordered Probit results show that living in a migrant household lowers the chances of boys completing junior high school and of boys and girls completing high school. The negative effect of migration on schooling is somewhat mitigated for younger girls with low educated mothers, which is consistent with remittances relaxing credit constraints on education investment for the very poor. However, for the majority of rural Mexican children, family migration depresses educational attainment. Comparison of the marginal effects of migration on school attendance and on participation in other activities shows that the observed decrease in schooling of 16 to 18 year-olds is accounted for by the current migration of boys and increased housework for girls. |
| Keywords: | Education For All,Primary Education,Teaching and Learning,Anthropology,Child Labor |
| Date: | 2006–06–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:3952&r=edu |
| By: | Randall Reback (Barnard College, Columbia University) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines whether minimum competency school accountability systems, such as those created under No Child Left Behind, influence the distribution of student achievement. Because school ratings in these systems only incorporate students' test scores via pass rates, this type of system increases incentives for schools to improve the performance of students who are on the margin of passing but does not increase short-run incentives for schools to improve other students' performance. Using student-level, panel data from Texas during the 1990's, I explicitly calculate schools' short-run incentives to improve various students' expected performance, and I find that schools do respond to these incentives. Students perform better than expected when their test score is particularly important for their schools' accountability rating. Also, low achieving students perform better than expected in math when many of their classmates' math scores are important for the schools' rating, while relatively high achieving students do not perform better. Distributional effects appear to be related to broad changes in resources or instruction, as well as narrowly tailored attempts to improve the performance of specific students. |
| Keywords: | School Accountability; Performance measures; Test scores; No Child Left Behind; School Ratings; Incentives; Distributional Effects; Minimum Competency |
| JEL: | I28 H39 |
| Date: | 2006–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:brn:wpaper:0602&r=edu |
| By: | Servaas van der Berg (Department of Economics, Stellenbosch University) |
| Abstract: | Massive differentials on achievement tests and examinations reflect South Africa’s divided past. Improving the distribution of educational outcomes is imperative to overcome labour market inequalities. Historically white and Indian schools still outperform black and coloured schools in examinations, and intraclass correlation coefficients (rho) reflect far greater between-school variance compared to overall variance than for other countries. SACMEQ’s rich data sets provide new possibilities for investigating relationships between educational outcomes, socio-economic status (SES), pupil and teacher characteristics, school resources and school processes. As a different data generating process applied in affluent historically white schools (test scores showed bimodal distributions), part of the analysis excluded such schools, sharply reducing rho. Test scores were regressed on various SES measures and school inputs for the full and reduced sample, using survey regression and hierarchical (multilevel) (HLM) models to deal with sample design and nested data. This shows that the school system was not yet systematically able to overcome inherited socio-economic disadvantage, and poor schools least so. Schools diverged in their ability to convert inputs into outcomes, with large standard deviations for random effects in the HLM models. The models explained three quarters of the large between-school variance but little of the smaller within-school variance. Outside of the richest schools, SES had only a mild impact on test scores, which were quite low in SACMEQ context. |
| Keywords: | Analysis of Education |
| JEL: | J21 |
| Date: | 2006 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sza:wpaper:wpapers20&r=edu |
| By: | Mansuri, Ghazala |
| Abstract: | Inequalities in access to education pose a significant barrier to development. It has been argued that this reflects, in part, borrowing constraints that inhibit private investment in human capital by the poor. One promise o f the recent proposals to open international labor markets to allow for the temporary economic migration of low-skilled workers from developing to industrial countries is its potential impact on human capital accumulation by the poor. The large remittance flows from migrants to their communities of origin underscores this aspect of migration. However, migration can also transform expectations of future employment and induce changes in household structure that can exert an independent effect on the private returns to investment in human capital. The author explores the relationship between temporary economic migration and investment in child schooling. A key challenge is to deal appropriately with selection into migration. She finds that the potential positive effects of temporary economic migration on human capital accumulation are large. Moreover, the gains are much greater for girls, yielding a very substantial reduction in gender inequalities in access to education. Significantly, though, the gains appear to arise almost entirely from the greater resource flows to migrant households. The author cannot detect any effect of future migration prospects on schooling decisions. More significantly, she does not find any protective effect of migration-induced female headship on schooling outcomes for girls. Rather, female headship appears to protect boys at the cost of girls. |
| Keywords: | Gender and Development,Primary Education,Youth and Governance,Anthropology,Education For All |
| Date: | 2006–06–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:3945&r=edu |
| By: | Gabriela Inchauste |
| Abstract: | Recognizing that intrahousehold inequalities exist, this study focuses on the distribution of resources toward children across household types. A bargaining framework is used to test whether it matters who has control over resources. Results show that control over resources matters, as well as the characteristics of family members. The policy implication is that the education of mothers is important to improve child welfare, over and above the benefits of cash transfer schemes. Parental education campaigns should accompany child welfare programs, particularly among indigenous families. Children fare better when mothers are educated, both parents are present, and there are fewer children. |
| Keywords: | Resource allocation , Bolivia , Education , Economic models , |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:imf:imfwpa:01/57&r=edu |
| By: | William Evans; Wooyoung Kim |
| Abstract: | Using restricted-use data from the 1990 and 2000 Census long-form, we analyze the impact of local labor market conditions on the demand for education using the economic shock produced by the opening of a new casino on an Indian reservation as the identifying event. Federal legislation in 1988 allowed Indian tribes to open casinos in many states and since then, over 400 casinos have opened, 240 of which have Las Vegas-style games. We demonstrate that the opening of a casino increased the employment and wages of low-skilled workers. Young adults responded by dropping out of high school and reducing college enrollment rates, even though many tribes have generous college tuition subsidy programs. |
| Date: | 2006–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cen:wpaper:06-14&r=edu |
| By: | Stephane Mechoulan |
| Abstract: | We examine how the rising incarceration of Black men and the sex ratio imbalance it induces shapes young Black women’s behavior during their late teens and early twenties. Combining data from the BJS and the CPS to match incarceration rates with individual observations, we show that Black male incarceration lowers the odds of non-marital teenage fertility and increases single Black women’s school attainment and early employment. We do not find consistent evidence that high Black male incarceration rates decrease the likelihood of getting married for young Black women. These results are robust to using sentencing changes and prison capacity expansions as instruments for incarceration. |
| Keywords: | incarceration, prison, prison capacity, sentencing laws, teenage fertility, education, school, labor force participation |
| JEL: | I21 K42 J12 J13 J15 J22 J24 |
| Date: | 2006–06–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tor:tecipa:tecipa-240&r=edu |
| By: | Tran Ngoc Ca |
| Abstract: | This study looks at the contribution of the university system in Vietnam to the socioeconomic development in general, and their relationship with firms, dynamic actors of the economy in particular. The study uses different methods of research, from reliance on secondary data to interviews with universities and survey of firms. Several case studies of the key universities in four regions have been undertaken: Hanoi in the north, Danang in the center, and Ho Chi Minh City and Cantho in the south of Vietnam. The findings show that the role of Vietnamese universities in research is much weaker than teaching, and that their contribution to the socioeconomic development of the country is limited to the production of an educated labor force rather than innovation. However, in selected universities, innovation did take place to a certain extent and brought benefits for both the universities and firms they served. This situation is explained by both the inherited university system in Vietnam and its shift in behavior in the context of economic renovation and globalization. |
| Keywords: | Tertiary Education,ICT Policy and Strategies,Agricultural Knowledge & Information Systems,Rural Development Knowledge & Information Systems,Access & Equity in Basic Education |
| Date: | 2006–06–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:3949&r=edu |
| By: | T. Paul Schultz (Economic Growth Center, Yale University) |
| Abstract: | This paper assesses the empirical relationship between the liberalization of international trade and the economic status of women. Although historically globalization is not generally linked to the advancement of women, several recent country studies find export led growth in middle and low income countries is associated with improvements in women’s employment opportunities. Does intercountry empirical evidence confirm this association across a wider range of countries, and suggest the mechanisms by which it operates? Measures of wages for men and women are an unreliable basis for study of gender inequality in many low-income countries, and thus schooling and health are analyzed here as indicators of productivity and welfare and gender gaps. For a sample of 70 countries observed at five year intervals from 1965 to 1980, tariff, quota, and foreign exchange restrictions are found to be inversely associated with trade, and with the levels of education and health, especially for women. Natural resource exports, although providing foreign exchange for imports, appear to reduce investments in schooling and health, and delay the equalization of these human capital investments between men and women. Liberalization of trade policy is consequently linked in the cross section to increased trade, to greater accumulation of human capital, and to increased gender equality. |
| Keywords: | Trade Liberalization, Schooling, Health, Gender Equality |
| JEL: | I12 J16 I21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:egc:wpaper:935&r=edu |