Search

Early childhood education programs have been found to effectively promote children's social and cognitive development. However, the health impact of these programs is less understood. Using a quasi-experiment of the first universal child care reform in China from 2010, this paper aims to identify whether the preschool reform produces any short-term effects on health-related outcomes of preschoolers (3-6 years old). Specifically, this reform expands access to affordable preschools that provide full-day center-based education, with school meals and essential health services on campus. I exploit the variation in the number of newly established preschools across provinces and implement difference-in-differences and triple-difference strategies. Results confirm the effectiveness of this reform by showing a strong and positive impact on preschool attendance. This paper then documents the benefits to alleviating underweight among preschoolers. Estimates show a larger effect in rural areas, suggesting that the reform narrows rural-urban disparities in education access and undernutrition prevention. I also explore the impact on caregivers' health consciousness and find improved health-seeking behavior when children get sick. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The paper examines the effect of social identity on learning for adults under a hierarchical social setting. • Using primary data from a randomized controlled experiment in India where illiterate adult female learners were randomly assigned to a free technology-based literacy program, we found positive and significant impact of matching an upper caste teacher with a lower caste student on literacy scores. • We find suggestive evidence of an increase in students' confidence measures when matched with an upper caste teacher. The paper examines the effect of social identity on adult learning within a hierarchical social setting— an important yet often understudied issue for effective adult education. We leverage the random matching of students and teachers from a randomized controlled experiment in India, where illiterate adult female learners aged 18–45 were randomly assigned to a literacy program. We find a positive and significant impact of matching an upper caste teacher with a lower caste adult student on literacy scores. We also find suggestive evidence of an increase in students' confidence measures when matched with an upper caste teacher, indicating a plausible impact mechanism. Our findings highlight the need for future research on social identity and its influence on adult learning, particularly in countries with existing deep-rooted hierarchical social constructs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• This paper examines the effects of increasing the school leaving age from 16 to 18. • The reform did not decrease the probability of dropping out of secondary school. • Neither did the reform affect employment, hours worked and wages by age 25. • Compulsory schooling age legislation is not enough in systems with grade retention. • It should be combined with the requirement of earning a secondary degree. This paper examines the effects of increasing the compulsory school leaving age from 16 to 18 in Hungary using a difference-in-regression-discontinuities design empirical strategy. While the reform increased the length of schooling, it did not decrease the probability of dropping out of secondary school, either on average or among the most at-risk group of Roma ethnic minority students. Due to grade retentions, marginal students were older than their peers and couldn't have reached the final grade of secondary school by age 18 to earn a degree. The reform also did not affect the probability of employment, hours worked, wages and the probability of working in low-skilled occupations at ages 20 and 25. In education systems that allow grade retention, compulsory education should have the explicit goal of keeping students in school until they earn a secondary degree, rather than just until a certain age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the impact of a series of male and female alumni speaker interventions in introductory microeconomics courses on student interest in economics. Using student-level transcript data, we estimate the effect of speakers in models which use untreated lectures as control groups, including professor and semester-year fixed effects and student-level covariates. Alumni speakers increase intermediate economics course take-up by 1.7–2.1 percentage points (9–12%). Students are more responsive to same-gender speakers, with male speakers increasing men's course take-up by 36–38% and female speakers increasing women's course take-up by 37–40% implying that the effect of alumni speakers is strongly gendered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies school choice and information frictions in Haiti. Through a randomized control trial, we assess the impact of disclosing school-level test score information on learning outcomes, prices, and market shares. We find evidence that in markets where information was disclosed, students attending private schools increased test scores. The results also suggest private schools with higher baseline test scores increased their market share as well as their fees when the disclosure policy is implemented. While prices and test scores were not significantly correlated in the baseline survey, they exhibited a significant and positive correlation in treatment markets after information disclosure. These results underscore the potential of information provision to enhance market efficiency and improve children's welfare in context such as Haiti. • Survey data from parents in Haiti on school preferences reveal demand for quality schools but significant information asymmetries. • Results suggest disclosure policy increased correlation between test scores and prices. • RCT evidence indicates information provision can improve student outcomes in poor education markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a large-scale school readiness survey in Thailand, this paper presents empirical evidence of learning losses from school closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic for kindergartners. Overall results indicate that school closure during the outbreak of COVID-19 causes significant learning losses in cognitive skills, especially in mathematics and working memory. The negative impact is heterogeneous across several dimensions, including child gender, special needs, wealth, private tutoring, caregiver education, and parental absence. This paper also estimates daily learning gains, of which significant results confirm that going to school has significantly benefited young children, especially in receptive language, mathematics, and working memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most states responded to the onset of the pandemic by granting temporary licenses that allowed teachers to work in classrooms without first passing the typical licensure exams. In this paper, we examine the result of this policy in Massachusetts using data on multiple cohorts of emergency licensed teachers (ELTs). We find that ELTs were slightly more likely to be retained in the same school than teachers from other entry routes. However, ELTs' students scored significantly lower on standardized tests in math and science than other students in the same school and same year. Our findings are at odds with earlier, more positive assessments of emergency licensure. Our updated results appear to be driven by more recent cohorts of ELTs. Overall, this study suggests policymakers should be cautious when drawing sweeping conclusions about the impacts of teacher licensure based solely on the earliest cohort of teachers who obtained pandemic-era licenses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a sample of bachelor degree holders from the Canadian Census, this paper estimates the earnings premium that a university graduate receives from working in an occupation that requires knowledge that is related to their field of study. This is accomplished by developing an alignment score which measures the similarity between the knowledge requirements of an individual's actual occupation, and the knowledge requirements of the occupations that their field of study trains individuals for. While controlling for field of study and occupation fixed effects, the results indicate that a one standard deviation improvement in the knowledge-alignment between one's occupation and field of study produces an earnings premium of approximately 4.3%. This indicates that well-aligned graduates earn more than graduates from the same field of study who work in otherwise similar paying occupations that are less closely aligned with the field of study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the impact of a reform which replaced universal basic grants by income-contingent loans on enrolment in Dutch higher education using administrative data of ten complete student cohorts. Estimates of differences between cohorts show no negative effect of the policy on enrolment. Moreover, difference-in-differences estimates exploiting variation in eligibility for supplementary grants show no negative effect on enrolment. These findings suggest that a system of income-contingent loans can facilitate an increase of private contributions without harming access to higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with identifying whether selective high schools may have an effect on students' post-secondary trajectories and labor market prospects. It uses data from Tunisia, a country in which unemployment rates for post-secondary graduates are higher than for non-graduates, particularly for women—although there is significant variation across types of diplomas and fields of study. Our main finding is that admission to an elite high school raises students' probability to eventually get assigned to a university program associated with a lower post-graduation unemployment rate. This is particularly true for women. Focusing then on students who would have applied to post-secondary programs regardless of admission to an elite high school, we show that this effect is the result of an increase in the competitiveness of their applications rather than of a change in their probability to apply to programs lower post-graduation unemployment rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]