IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/4998.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

School enrollment, selection and test scores

Author

Listed:
  • Filmer, Deon
  • Schady, Norbert

Abstract

There is a strong association between schooling attained and test scores in many settings. If this association is causal, one might expect that programs that increase school enrollment and attainment would also improve test scores. However, if there is self-selection into school based on expected gains, marginal children brought into school by such programs may be drawn disproportionately from the left-hand side of the ability distribution, which could limit the extent to which additional schooling translates into more learning. To test this proposition, this paper uses data from Cambodia. The results show that a program that provides scholarships to poor students had a large effect on school enrollment and attendance, which increased by approximately 25 percentage points. However, there is no evidence that, 18 months after the scholarships were awarded, recipient children did any better on mathematics and vocabulary tests than they would have in the absence of the program. The paper discusses results that suggest that the self-selection of lower-ability students into school in response to the program is an important part of the explanation. The analysis also shows minimal program effects on other outcomes, including knowledge of health practices, expectations about the future, and adolescent mental health.

Suggested Citation

  • Filmer, Deon & Schady, Norbert, 2009. "School enrollment, selection and test scores," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4998, The World Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4998
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2009/07/17/000158349_20090717130545/Rendered/PDF/WPS4998.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. CCTs usually increase schooling but few studies have found gains in test scores – what’s behind this disconnect?
      by Jed Friedman in Development Impact on 2012-04-11 18:28:51

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Filmer, Deon & Schady, Norbert, 2011. "Does more cash in conditional cash transfer programs always lead to larger impacts on school attendance?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(1), pages 150-157, September.
    2. Giang, Long & Nguyen, Cuong, 2015. "Impact Assessment and Micro-Simulations of Different Policy Options for Child Benefit in Viet Nam," MPRA Paper 72628, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Harold Alderman & Ruslan Yemtsov, 2014. "How Can Safety Nets Contribute to Economic Growth?," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 28(1), pages 1-20.
    4. Mohammad Niaz Asadullah, Nazmul Chaudhury, 2013. "Primary Schooling, Student Learning, and School Quality in Rural Bangladesh-Working Paper 349," Working Papers 349, Center for Global Development.
    5. Juan Esteban Saavedra & Sandra Garcia, 2012. "Impacts of Conditional Cash Transfer Programs on Educational Outcomes in Developing Countries A Meta-analysis," Working Papers WR-921-1, RAND Corporation.
    6. Fiona Samuels & Maria Stavropoulou, 2016. "‘Being Able to Breathe Again’: The Effects of Cash Transfer Programmes on Psychosocial Wellbeing," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 52(8), pages 1099-1114, August.
    7. Monica J. Grant, 2015. "The Demographic Promise of Expanded Female Education: Trends in the Age at First Birth in Malawi," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 41(3), pages 409-438, September.
    8. Harold Alderman, 2011. "No Small Matter : The Impact of Poverty, Shocks, and Human Capital Investments in Early Childhood Development," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 2266.
    9. Giang, Long Thanh & Nguyen, Cuong Viet, 2017. "How would cash transfers improve child welfare in Viet Nam?," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 87-98.
    10. Baez, Javier E. & Camacho, Adriana, 2011. "Assessing the Long-term Effects of Conditional Cash Transfers on Human Capital: Evidence from Colombia," IZA Discussion Papers 5751, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. McGuire, Joel & Kaiser, Caspar & Bach-Mortensen, Anders, 2020. "The impact of cash transfers on subjective well-being and mental health in low- and middle- income countries: A systematic review and meta-analysis," SocArXiv ydr54, Center for Open Science.
    12. Muhammad Qahraman Kakar, 2021. "Ethnic Disparities, Women Education and Empowerment in South Asia," Erudite Ph.D Dissertations, Erudite, number ph21-01 edited by Manon Domingues Dos Santos.
    13. Akresh, Richard & de Walque, Damien & Kazianga, Harounan, 2013. "Cash transfers and child schooling : evidence from a randomized evaluation of the role of conditionality," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6340, The World Bank.
    14. Mauricio Villamizar‐Villegas & Freddy A. Pinzon‐Puerto & Maria Alejandra Ruiz‐Sanchez, 2022. "A comprehensive history of regression discontinuity designs: An empirical survey of the last 60 years," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(4), pages 1130-1178, September.
    15. Sandra García & Juan Saavedra, 2017. "Educational Impacts and Cost-Effectiveness of Conditional Cash Transfer Programs in Developing Countries: A Meta-Analysis," NBER Working Papers 23594, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Esper,Hisham & Krishnan,Nandini & Wieser,Christina, 2022. "More Is Better : Evaluating the Impact of a Variation in Cash Assistance on the Reintegration Outcomesof Returning Afghan Refugees," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9897, The World Bank.
    17. Sarah Baird & Ephraim Chirwa & Craig McIntosh & Berk Özler, 2010. "The short‐term impacts of a schooling conditional cash transfer program on the sexual behavior of young women," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(S1), pages 55-68, September.
    18. Clotilde Mahé & Philipp Hessel, 2022. "School-age exposure to conditional cash transfers and adult mental health: Evidence from Mexico’s Progresa," Documentos de trabajo 20155, Escuela de Gobierno - Universidad de los Andes.
    19. Cosentino, Clemencia & Fortson, Jane & Liuzzi, Sarah & Harris, Anthony & Blair, Randall, 2019. "Can scholarships provide equitable access to high-quality university education? Evidence from the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    20. Tsaneva, Magda, 2017. "Does school Matter? Learning outcomes of Indonesian children after dropping out of school," World Development Perspectives, Elsevier, vol. 6(C), pages 1-10.
    21. Najy Benhassine & Florencia Devoto & Esther Duflo & Pascaline Dupas & Victor Pouliquen, 2015. "Turning a Shove into a Nudge? A "Labeled Cash Transfer" for Education," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 7(3), pages 86-125, August.
    22. Barham, Tania & Macours, Karen & Maluccio, John A., 2013. "More Schooling and More Learning?: Effects of a Three-Year Conditional Cash Transfer Program in Nicaragua after 10 Years," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 4584, Inter-American Development Bank.
    23. World Bank, 2018. "World Development Report 2018 [Rapport sur le développement dans le monde 2018]," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 28340.
    24. Ma, Zhao & Bauchet, Jonathan & Steele, Diana & Godoy, Ricardo & Radel, Claudia & Zanotti, Laura, 2017. "Comparison of Direct Transfers for Human Capital Development and Environmental Conservation," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 498-517.
    25. Neha B. Upadhayay & Qahraman Kakar, 2021. "Access to schools and learning outcomes of children with disabilities in Pakistan. Findings from a household survey in four administrative units," Erudite Working Paper 2021-06, Erudite.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Tertiary Education; Education For All; Primary Education; Teaching and Learning; Secondary Education;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4998. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Roula I. Yazigi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.