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From the Editor's Desk (January 2012)Tony Addison January saw the snow arrive in Helsinki. As I look out across the harbour, the scene is one of various shades of white and grey. The...
Tony Addison January saw the snow arrive in Helsinki. As I look out across the harbour, the scene is one of various shades of white and grey. The...
Tony Addison It’s now February, and Helsinki remains deep in snow. We had an extended blizzard last weekend, with temperatures hovering around minus...
Tony Addison This year has rushed by at speed. For UNU-WIDER it’s been a year of big successes. We will have published some 110 working papers by the...
Alyssa McCluskey, Channing Arndt, and Innocent Matshe In April-May of this year, the AERC and UNU-WIDER offered an online course on climate change...
21 March 2013 In foreign aid, results are the buzz word of the day; evaluation, monitoring, and quality control are the means of demonstrating to...
17 October 2013 James Foster describes the importance of moving beyond income poverty as a way of assessing 'who is poor?' and 'how poor?'...
Malokele Nanivazo Sexual violence crime (SV) in wartime is not a new phenomenon. Mass rapes have occurred in armed conflicts in Rwanda, Kosovo...
This paper examines a broad range of opportunities for addressing the pressing human development needs of low-income countries by using new oil, gas, and mineral discoveries. It assesses how much of an impact can be made on the funding gaps for...
We analyse horizontal inequality in wealth and in years of education in the Democratic Republic of the Congo over the period 2001–13. We find that the trend in horizontal inequality is similar to the trend in vertical inequality over the period of...
Human capital models imply that both the distribution of education and returns to education affect earnings inequality. Decomposition of these ‘quantity’ and ‘price’ components have been important in understanding changes in earnings inequality in...
This paper discusses the recent history of education aid policy. It highlights an important shift in policy thinking in the international aid architecture that has dominated the global education aid agenda since the early 1990s. It argues that...
This paper evaluates fairness in educational achievements through the ordered pair (WEEOp, IEOp) whose components provide: (i) A measure of social welfare which accounts for the achievement of less-advantaged pupils and (ii) a synthetic index of...
We study a model of human capital driven growth, where the parent’s human capital serves as a productive input in the child’s human capital production only when that of the former exceeds a minimum level required to intellectually contribute to the...
The hypothesis that ethnic diversity has a negative impact on public goods provision is widely accepted. Notably, most work on this issue fails to distinguish adequately between national versus subnational governance. We find that subnational...
This paper discusses dimensions of inequality in sub-Saharan Africa and their causes. It starts with a review of the empirical evidence about inequality during the colonial period as well as the post-independence era. Then it discusses the forces...
We investigate the heterogeneous and nonlinear intergenerational transmission channels of education and the impact on this of house price appreciation. Using the China Household Finance Survey 2011, we construct household history of property...
Technical, vocational education, and training has remained an explosive topic because it can create a divided society in terms of education and the benefits associated with it. Internationally, it has always been a complex and controversial topic...
Vocational training programmes, like South Africa’s learnership programme, which combine classroom learning and on-the-job training seem like the type of intervention which can create skills, get young people into jobs quicker, and reduce youth...
In the first two or three decades of independence, Nigeria, like the rest of Africa. placed heavy emphasis on expanding educational opportunities from primary school through university. This has resulted in a very impressive increase in the number of...
It is widely accepted in recent work in economics and political science that ethnic diversity has a negative impact on the provision of public goods...
In a recent article in the International Journal of Educational Development we present the results of a systematic review conducted to identify policy...
We conducted a systematic review to identify policy interventions that improve education quality and student learning in developing countries. Relying on a theory of change typology, we highlight three main drivers of change of education quality: (1)...
This paper provides evidence on the nature of returns to education in Ghana and confirms the emerging empirical literature on the convexity of returns to education in Ghana. Using a basic Mincerian, model we find that returns to education more than...
I first document that the introduction of the One Child Policy dramatically increased sex selection in certain regions, and that the Chinese government responded to this by allowing parents who had a daughter as their first child to try for a second...
The paper investigates the differences in private marginal returns to education between wage-employees and the self-employed in Uganda, using the Mincerian framework with pooled regression models. We use a two-wave household panel to estimate...
The paper reviews the extent of the income inequality decline that took place in Latin America in 2002-10 and then focuses on the factors that may explain such decline. These include a lowered skill premium following an expansion of secondary...
This paper evaluates the impact of education on measured inequality across the wage distribution using pooled records from the 2005 and 2010 Cameroon labour force surveys, wage equations and standard inequality measures. Returns to education...
Productivity gains are the prime engine of economic growth. This paper uses a rich amount of firms’ accounting information from the Single Information Collecting Centre in Senegal over the period 1998-2011. To investigate the two main obstacles to...
Part of Journal Special Issue Aid, Education Policy, and Development
Part of Journal Special Issue Aid, Education Policy, and Development
Part of Journal Special Issue Aid, Education Policy, and Development
Part of Journal Special Issue Aid, Education Policy, and Development
Part of Journal Special Issue Aid, Education Policy, and Development
Food for Education (FFE) programmes have been implemented in developing countries since the 1960s. This paper examines the impact of the Catholic Relief Services (CRS) school feeding programme on pupils’ attendance and girls’ enrolment rate within...
Mozambique, in common with many other developing countries, has achieved impressive increases in access to education. Since 2000, the number of...
The first part of the paper describes steps which Tanzania took in order to provide key social services to her people. Tanzania made great efforts within the ujamaa socialist system to provide free social services for rural as well as urban people...
This paper presents a brief history of social services provision in Nigeria with special reference to education. It argues that the problems of implementation of social policies are due to state monopolies; the negative effects of structural...
Unprecedented numbers of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children have arrived in Europe over the last decade, and young Afghans account for the highest proportion of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children across the UK. Despite research exploring the...
Education is my freedom ... if I have my education, everything is still possible for me in the future. Mohammed grinned, and looked down at his newly...
Part of Journal Special Issue Horizontal inequality in the Global South
Part of Journal Special Issue Horizontal inequality in the Global South
Part of Journal Special Issue Horizontal Inequality: Persistence and Change
This paper examines the impact of the transition to a market economy on health and education outcomes in transitional Asia, with particular focus on the case of Vietnam. After examining a variety of empirical evidence, several lessons emerge. First...
The first part of the paper describes steps which Tanzania took in order to provide key social services to her people. Tanzania made great efforts within the ujamaa socialist system to provide free social services for rural as well as urban people...
In the current debate on the relationship between inequality in income distribution and growth one of the possible link works through the access to education. After reviewing this debate, a formal model shows how the imperfection of financial markets...
The utility from some 'commodities' depends on the allocation rule used to distribute it. If, for example, a prize for excellence in some field is given frequently to the highest bidders, its recipients would feel less happy than they would otherwise...
This paper studies to what extent and in what ways access to educational services and schooling outcomes of local children are influenced by the presence of a refugee camp in or around their community. Taking the case of Congolese refugees in Rwanda...
This paper examines the impact of gender based violence against women and girls (GBV), in the environment the children live in, on school attendance, school achievement, as well as boys’ and girls’ dropouts. Based on the sixth phase of the...
Basu and Foster (1998) characterized a sophisticated literacy measure using five axioms. In this paper we argue that if a measure satisfies three of their five axioms, namely, anonymity, monotonicity and externality, then also it becomes suitable in...
This paper uses data on individual earnings in manufacturing industry for five African countries in the early 1990s to test whether firms located in the capital city pay higher wages than firms located elsewhere, and whether such benefits accrue to...
Part of Journal Special Issue Aid for Gender Equality and Development
In this paper we propose to measure the inequality of educational achievements by constructing a Gini index on educational attainments. We then use the proposed measure to analyse the relationship between inequality in incomes and educational...
This paper presents a model allowing one to analyze the joint determination of inequality, taxes, human capital and growth. We consider the political economy of redistribution between three income groups in a dynamic economy. The paper seeks to...
We study the trajectory of the gender gap over time and over the life cycle, using a matched employer-employee data from the formal labour market in Brazil. We document the evolution of participation and earnings for both males and females during the...
I use a dynamic microsimulation model to analyse the distributional effects of an expansion of education in Côte d’Ivoire in the medium and long term. The simulations are performed in order to replicate several policies in force or subject to debate...
The analysis of the optimal funding of education is complicated by the numerous and serious market failures which are likely to characterize a free market for education. Prominent amongst these are the likely external benefits of education, stressed...
We investigate the trend in the gender employment gap in the expanding non-subsistence sector of the economy in Mozambique, a country still characterized by a large subsistence agricultural sector. We show evidence that the gender gap has widened...
In very poor countries, inequality often means that a small part of the population maintains living standards far above the rest. This is also true for educational inequality in Mozambique: only a small segment of the population has access to higher...
From the book: Oxford Handbook of Africa and Economics, Vol. 1.
Income inequality has risen in many parts of the world during the past decades. Rising inequality is no longer a problem of only Latin American and Sub-Saharan African countries. Some OECD countries, and recently also East Asian countries, have...
Part of Book Towards Gender Equity in Development
This ethnographic study explores the implementation of bilingual education in Mozambique: how it is understood, adapted, and resisted by school directors, teachers, and local officials. Bilingual education uses local languages in early grades before...
This paper focuses on gender aspects upon children’s food security. Using data from the 1995/1996 Nepal Living Standards Survey, this study attempts to find evidence to whether children are heavier for their age, taller for their age or heavier for...
Building on a World Bank regional study in Africa aiming at measuring social contracts concepts and within the framework of reflecting on future donor interventions, this paper applies social contracts measurement and complements with qualitative...
I study the impact of school consolidation on enrolment and achievement, using its staggered roll-out in the Indian state of Rajasthan. Across the years 2014, 2016, and 2017, Rajasthan merged many of its grade 1–5 schools with grade 6–10 schools to...
Standardization was the scheme that replaced meritocracy in Sri Lanka education, with positive discrimination to increase the majority Sinhalese community’s university enrolment. It did so by minimizing better-qualified minority Tamils’ university...
Several sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries have achieved substantial economic growth in the past 30 years. Likewise, access to education has considerably expanded, as reflected in rising enrolment rates for both men and women. Female labour force...
Using data from a survey of Bangladeshi households, this paper explores the determinants of domestic violence against women as well as its implications for the resources allocated to women. The findings reveal that higher education of women and that...
International development cooperation has evolved since the 1960s. The effectiveness of aid is still topical, but studies have not paid adequate attention to the relationship between sectoral aid, politics, institutions, and aid effectiveness in...
This paper investigates the impact of the Science without Borders (Ciência sem Fronteiras – CSF) programme on participants’ post-graduation enrolment, employment, and entrepreneurship. The programme was launched in 2011 to increase students’ human...
Many countries today experience increasing or persistent income inequality, a major concern for citizens and politicians alike. This concern is...
This paper investigates the net impact of birth control policy in China on educational attainment of the partially excluded ethnic minorities. Exploring county-level variation in the value of fines levied for unsanctioned births, we show that more...
Education is a public service, assumed to be highly valued by citizens, allowing politicians to use it to reward their co-ethnics. However, nation-states have also used education to create loyal citizens, leaving politicians in times of heightened...
In large parts of the world, income inequality has been rising in recent decades. Other regions have experienced declining trends in income inequality. This raises the question of which mechanisms underlie contrasting observed trends in income...
We examine how returns to education have evolved in the context of post-conflict reconstruction and economic growth in Mozambique over the period 1996–2015. We show that private rates of return to education have declined at lower levels of schooling...
I evaluate the impact of the right to education from the passing of the Right to Education Act in India in 2009. This Act guaranteed free education to children aged 6–14 years, including children with disabilities. Given that the school participation...
While there is extensive literature examining the growth and development effects of foreign aid, very little attention has been paid to its potential impact on social mobility. Thus, this paper provides the first empirical evidence on the effects of...
We analyse the effect of parental risk preferences and a novel measure of maternal bargaining power over educational expenses—elicited via lab-in-the-field experiments in rural Côte d’Ivoire—on the educational progression of boys and girls. Data from...
This paper uses data from the Nepal Living Standards Survey 2 (2003/2004) to find evidence to whether children are less likely to work and more likely to attend school in a household where the mother has a say in the intra-family decision-making...
This paper estimated models for GDP growth rates, poverty levels, and inequality measures for the period 1990–2000 using data on 54 developing countries at five-yearly intervals. Issues of globalization were investigated by analysing the differential...
Although formal education is often considered an indicator of political leaders’ quality, the evidence on the effectiveness of educated leaders is mixed. Besides, minimum education qualifications are increasingly being used as requirements for...
Part of Book The Job Ladder
This paper documents the state of elementary education in India and China since the 1960s, key lessons for India from China’s shift in focus from ‘quantity’ to ‘quality’, and evidence-based guidelines for effective implementation of India’s New...
This paper studies the unintended long-run effects of a permanent agricultural shock led by agro-terrorism in Brazil on the education and labour market. We explore the witches' broom outbreak in cocoa farms in the world's second most important cocoa...
This paper studies the education gradient associated with health reporting errors for two highly prevalent non-communicable diseases among older adults in India. We leverage a novel data set—the Longitudinal Aging Study in India (2017–18) panel...
The purpose of the study is two-fold. First, it examines whether Internet usage converges across the geographical space comprising the European Union and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Second, it aims to expand the currently rather limited...
This study investigates the unexpected impact that enforcing birth control policies in China has upon the educational stratification between the Han majority, the policy target group, and ethnic minorities, a partially excluded group. Exploring...
We suggest a simple and flexible criterion to assess inter-generational mobility. It accommodates different types of outcomes (continuous outcomes such as potential earnings, or discrete ones such as education groups) and captures dynastic...
I recently spoke to Catherine Gladwell, who is the Director and Founder of Refugee Education UK (formerly Refugee Support Network) and one of the...
The negative economic and social impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in Mozambique range from reduced social interaction to business closures, job losses...
This paper examines the evolution of China’s industrial and occupational structure in the last two decades and its impact on wage inequality. We find that non-routine cognitive and interpersonal tasks have increased, while routine cognitive tasks...
Inequality is a major international development challenge. This is so from an ethical perspective and because greater inequality is perceived to be detrimental to key socioeconomic and political outcomes. Still, informed debate requires clear...
This paper estimates the causal impact of teacher content knowledge on student achievement in Mozambique, a low-income country where a large share of fourth-graders fail to meet the minimum requirements of literacy and numeracy. I use nationally...
We investigate heterogeneous and nonlinear intergenerational transmission of education and the impact on this of house prices. Using the China Household Finance Survey, we construct household history of property pur-chases and educational investment...
Peers play an essential role in cognitive and non-cognitive skills formation. Ordinal rank may also change incentives and environment, impacting students’ efforts. Using two rich administrative data sets and a rule of admission at one top university...
While studies have examined the association in socioeconomic status between parent and offspring, there has been relatively little research on...
This paper examines the impact of foreign aid on gender equality in education outcomes in developing countries. Heterogeneity effects by type of aid received and by type of recipients are investigated using system GMM methods. The results indicate...
The incredibly low levels of learning and the generally dysfunctional public sector schooling systems in many (though not all) developing countries are the result of a capability trap (Pritchett et al. 2010). Two phenomena reinforce persistent...
Notwithstanding the unprecedented attention devoted to reducing poverty and fostering human development via scaling up social sector spending, there is surprisingly little rigorous empirical work on the question of whether social spending is...
At the UNU-WIDER Inequality conference September 2014 we interviewed Murray Leibbrandt, Professor of Economics at the University of Cape Town on...
Just over a year ago, in March 2014, UNU-WIDER published a report entitled: What do we know about aid as we approach 2015? It notes the many successes...
In this interview Professor Nora Lustig, Samuel Z. Stone Professor of Latin American Economics at Tulane University, talks about the importance of...
School-feeding is an important intervention to attract children to school and augment their learning. The benefits of school-feeding cover several domains. Key to the overall assessment of these benefits is understanding how different implementation...
Efforts to tackle discrimination in access to basic services have shown mixed results in different country settings. This study examines the positive and negative outcomes attributed to anti-discrimination measures adopted in different country...
This paper investigates some of the existing hypotheses regarding the transmission of different colonial legacies to modern day economic growth. The fact that different colonial strategies were pursued by different colonizers in various territories...
Can democracy be taught? Are individuals more likely to embrace democratic values, to learn basic knowledge about political processes, and to engage the political process more effectively as a result of their exposure to donor-sponsored civic...
Raising schooling quality in low-income countries is a pressing challenge. Substantial research has considered the impact of cutting class sizes on skills acquisition. Considerably less attention has been given to the extent to which peer effects...
Part of Journal Special Issue Aiding Government Effectiveness in Developing Countries
Girls in India face many challenges. From the moment they are conceived, they are less likely to be born as compared to boys. This presence of...
For more than two decades, addressing constraints to better governance in developing countries has been a priority issue for the international donor community. Recent changes to aid modalities have further prioritized the need for improving...
In order to correct for the initial gender blindness of the Paris Declaration and related aid modalities as general and sector budget support, it has been proposed to integrate a gender dimension into budget support entry points. This paper studies...
The ReCom—Research and Communication on Foreign Aid—programme produced 240 original studies. Some 300 researchers from 60 countries came together and provided evidence on what does and could work in development, and what can be transferred and scaled...
The aid allocation literature has neglected gender-specific needs for aid. We assess the hypothesis that gender inequality in education is more likely to affect the aid allocation of donor countries with female leadership in the relevant ministry. We...
Under-nutrition is the single biggest cause of the global burden of disease, and many of those affected are children. Early childhood under-nutrition has severe consequences; it accounts for more than 35 per cent of deaths and another 35 per cent of...
This paper investigates the impact of social transfer programmes on school enrollment and child labour in Malawi utilizing a micro-simulation evaluation method. Four hypothetical cash transfer programmes, differentiated in terms of their conditions...
The failure of the Somali state from 1993 to 2012 represents one of the world’s most profound and prolonged cases of state collapse. Initially, education and other government services came to a standstill. With the halt of fighting in some areas...
This paper examines the effect of education aid on primary enrollment and education quality. Using the most recent data on aid disbursements and econometric specifications inspired by the general aid effectiveness literature, we find some evidence...
This paper reviews what has been learned over many decades of foreign aid to education. It discusses what works and what does not and in this discussion draws attention to the fact that even a simple assessment requires more than providing a uniform...
A consensus among social scientists is that fertility rates in Africa are declining. What determines these declines? I present fresh evidence that shows education, especially for women, is an important determinant of the fertility transition in...
Structural transformation in rural Vietnam has led to rising incomes and a diversification of livelihoods away from agriculture. Using panel data on children in 2,181 rural households surveyed over the 2008-14 period, we examine how the welfare of...
The number of land certification programmes around the world has been growing. In theory, the formalization of land rights should increase land tenure...
In this study, we explore the impact of a smart classroom (SCM) programme on student performance in science subjects in a high-stakes national exam for middle-high school students in Rwanda. To do this, we leverage plausibly exogenous variations in...
This paper describes changes over the past 15-20 years in non-income measures of wellbeing—education and health—in Africa. We expected to find, as we did in Latin America, that progress in the provision of public services and the focus of public...
The expected increase in aid to Africa will put a big challenge for public service delivery. Using a simultaneous equation model, this paper provides an analysis of the effects of the volume and volatility of aid on education, health, water and...
This paper examines whether foreign aid in education has a significant effect on growth. We take into consideration the heterogeneous nature of aid as well as the heterogeneity of aid recipients—we disaggregate the aid data into primary, secondary...
Left-of-centre governments emphasized fiscally-prudent but more equitable macroeconomic, tax, social expenditure and labour policies A drop in the premium paid to skilled workers following a rapid expansion of secondary education decreased wage...
During the 1990s, inequality in Ecuador increased because of a natural disaster and deep economic and financial crisis, as well as the impact of liberalization of the trade and financial sectors on labour markets Falling income equality in Ecuador...
by Ravi Kanbur When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, it was famously heralded as "the end of history" the end of all "big" debates on the organization of...
Increasing attention is now being accorded to the importance of education within the framework of endogenous growth. Meanwhile, external debt servicing has appeared as a major constraint in many developing countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa...
This paper uses data on anthropometric status and reported illness in Uganda to estimate the socio-economic determinants of children's health. After controlling for endogeneity, we find higher household income greatly raises child health. Parental...
Recent studies suggest that the allocation of expenditures in education is important for growth. The state of public education spending in many transition economies highlights the need for an assessment of the nature of education expenditures in...
This paper studies some empirical implications of models with limited risk sharing due to the imperfect enforceability of contracts. We test whether the amount by which public transfers reduce private transfers is affected by features of the economy...
Part of Journal Special Issue Well-being Achievements in Pacific Asia
Part of Book Democratic Reform and the Position of Women in Transitional Economies
Entrepreneurs, technical experts, professionals, international students, writers, and artists are among the most highly mobile people in the global economy today. These talented elite often originate from developing countries and migrate to...
We investigate within the context of Vietnam how circumstances at age 15 or 16 relate to completion of upper secondary education four years later. We exploit the longitudinal elements of the Vietnam Access to Resources Household Survey to identify...
This paper estimates the relationship between differences in skills measured among within-country ethnic groups and individual human capital accumulation in eight African countries. Our results show that the skills of an individual in these countries...
We analyse the aid portfolio of various bilateral and multilateral donors, testing whether they have prioritized aid in line with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Employing Tobit models that combine sectorally disaggregated aid data with...
This paper estimates how private returns to education have evolved in the context of postconflict transformation in Mozambique. This has been characterized by rapid economic growth, significant expansion of the schooling system, but also limited...
The level of income can be directly inferred from the level of education, making education an important variable as a key determinant of better livelihoods and poverty alleviation. However, in most developing countries education is not accessible to...
This paper examines the causes of conflict in Burundi and discusses strategies for building peace. The analysis of the complex relationships between distribution and group dynamics reveals that these relationships are reciprocal, implying that...
This paper uses two large repeated cross-sections, one for the early 1990s, and one for the late 1990s, to describe growth in school enrolment and completion rates for boys and girls in India, and to explore the extent to which enrolment and...
This study attempts to convey an accurate and dynamic account of educational inequality in China during the last decade. The study finds that there is clear evidence of rapid expansion of education, and younger students all over China are benefiting...
Unsophisticated applicants can be at a disadvantage under manipulable and hence strategically demanding school choice mechanisms. Disclosing information on applications in previous admission periods makes it easier to assess the chances of being...
Not all sources of inequality in educational achievements are fair. But how strong and persistent is the burden of unequal opportunities that each person carries on in their life? In this paper, we define individual indices of the burden of...
Part of Journal Special Issue Welfare and distributive effects of social assistance in the Global South
Part of Journal Special Issue Migration Governance and Policy in the Global South
The Millennium Development Goals have become the frame of reference for most of the development community: the standard by which performance will ultimately be judged. Given their importance, considerable attention has been paid as to whether these...
This paper examines the efficiency of public sector expenditures at achieving social sector outcomes in small island developing states (SIDS). Public sector efficiency is estimated using a stochastic production function (SPF) approach and panel data...
The United States and China are the world’s largest economies. Together they are responsible for about one-third of the world’s economic output. This paper aims to examine whether the two economic giants are also lands of opportunity where resources...
Can students’ rank in the ability distribution of their class impact their academic achievement? We aim to answer this question using a discontinuity generated by a rule for the distribution of students between classes at a prestigious Brazilian...
The survey on the School-to-Work Transitions of University Graduates in Mozambique aims to respond to the concerns of the Government of Mozambique and development partners with respect to youth employment in the country. The focus is on the...