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Worldwideschools have been closed for months following the outbreak of the Covid 19 pandemic.With a rising concern over learning poverty in the post pandemic world, pressure has grown ongovernments to reopen schools for onsite learning. In this context, this study, conducted by LeapEdServices in collaboration with Professor Niaz Asadullah of Monash University Malaysia, provides anindependent overview of Malaysia’s experience with post pandemic school reopening with a focuson potential learning loss.Fourgroups of stakeholders in the education sector were interviewed across Malaysia to gatherindependent data to document the experience before and after school reopening This allowedus todocument in detail the nature of learning disruptions during "school to home" and "home to school"transitions from the perspective of students, teachers, school leaders and parents. &nbsp

In developing countries, one in four girls is married before turning 18, with adverse consequences for their own and their children's human capital. In this paper, we investigate whether laws can affect attitudes and behaviour towards child marriage - in a context in which the laws are not strictly enforced. We do so using a randomised video-based information intervention that aimed to accelerate knowledge transmission about a new child marriage law in Bangladesh that introduced harsher punishments for facilitating early marriage. Follow-up surveys documented an increase in early marriage among treated households if the father or family elders received the information. The findings allow us to distinguish between two competing theoretical channels underlying the effect of legal change and highlight the risk of backlash against laws that contradict traditional norms and practices.

COVID-19 school closure has caused a worldwide shift towards technology-aided home schooling. Given widespread poverty in developing countries, this has raised concerns over new forms of learning inequalities. Using nationwide data on primary and secondary school children in slum and rural households in Bangladesh, we examine how learning time at home during the early months of school closure varies by access to technology at home. Data confirms a significant socio-economic and gender divide in access to TV, smartphone, computer, and internet among rural households. However, the analysis of daily time use data shows only a modest return to a technology in terms of boosting learning time at home. The learning-grade gradient is shallow and insensitive to TV, smartphone, and computer access at home. We also find no evidence that technology access per se helps learning by boosting time spent in online schooling and private supplementary coaching/tutoring. While technology access matters in households where parents act as home tutors, the magnitude of such a complementary effect are not large. The results imply a loss of out-of-school learning time during school closure even in households with technology access. We consider additional hypotheses relating to institutional and socio-economic barriers to home-based learning in developing countries.

This paper provides a systematic assessment of the alleged exceptionality of Malaysia’s development progress and its likely explanations, in comparative perspective. Using cross-country regressions and aggregate indices of education, health, poverty and gender equality outcomes, we produce evidence based on conditional correlations, offering three findings. First, the results support the hypothesis that Malaysia’s human development progress has been exceptional compared with that of countries with a similar level of economic development, primarily for the period 1970–1990. Next, we show that such progress is associated with a combination of income-mediated and support-led mechanisms, including Malaysia’s early emphasis on education and health inputs and infrastructure development. Finally, we look at long-term roots of its progress, arguing that early advantage in state capacity may be at the origin of Malaysia’s successful implementation of poverty reduction and growth-enhancing policies.

The practice of child marriage is ubiquitous in developing countries, where one in three girls is married before the age of 18. Although most developing countries have a legal minimum age of marriage, in practice marriage age is determined by social norms rather than the law. In this paper, we test the hypothesis that formal laws can influence social norms and marriage behaviour in a setting with weak law enforcement. We do this by administering a randomised video-based information treatment that accelerates knowledge transmission about a new child marriage law in Bangladesh. Our information treatments led to a change in participants' own attitudes and behaviour (including reported attitudes regarding appropriate marriage age and willingness to contribute to a charity that campaigns againstchild marriage), but did not substantially influence their beliefs about attitudes or practices prevalent in their community. Follow-up surveys conducted 5 and 10 months after the intervention show an increase in early marriage among adolescent girls within treatment households. These perverse e�ects are driven by households where the father and family elders were informed about the new law but are absent in households where only the mother is informed. The findings highlight a) the existence of informational frictions within housholds and b) the risk of a backlash effect against a law that contradicts traditional norms and practices.

Traditional gender norms can restrict independent migration by women, thus preventing them from taking advantage of economic opportunities in urban non-agricultural industries. However, women may be able to circumvent such restrictions by using marriage to engage in long-distance migration - if they are able to match with migrating grooms. Guided by a theoretical model in which women make marriage and migration decisions jointly, we hypothesize that marriage and labour markets will be inextricably linked by the possibility of marital migration. To test our hypotheses, we use the event of the construction of a major bridge in Bangladesh - which dramatically reduced travel time between the economically deprived north-western region and the manufacturing belt located around the capital city Dhaka - as a source of plausibly exogenous variation in migration costs. Our empirical ffndings support our model's main predictions and provide strong evidence for the existence of social barriers to female migration.