【AEW webinar】The First- and Second-Generation Impacts of Free Secondary Education: Experimental Evidence from Ghana

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• 研討會日期 : 2022-11-17
• 時間 : 08:30
• 主講人 : Professor Pascaline Dupas
• 地點 : Register and join online
• 演講者簡介 : Professor Pascaline Dupas received her Ph.D. in Economics from EHESS / PSE (Paris) in 2006. She is currently the Kleinheinz Family Professor of International Studies at Stanford University. Her research interest is development Economics.
• 演講摘要 : (1) The Impact of Free Secondary Education: Experimental Evidence from Ghana Following the widespread adoption of free primary education, African policymakers are now considering making secondary school free, but little is known about the private and social benefits of free secondary education. We exploit randomized assignment to secondary school scholarships among 2,064 youths in Ghana, combined with 12 years of data, to establish that scholarships increase educational attainment, knowledge, skills, and preventative health behaviors, while reducing female fertility. Eleven years after receipt of the scholarship, only female winners show private labor market gains, but those come primarily in the form of better access to jobs with rents (in particular rationed jobs in the public sector). We develop a simple model to interpret the labor market results and help think through the welfare impact of free secondary education.
• 演講摘要 : (2) Intergenerational Impacts of Secondary Education: Experimental Evidence from Ghana We provide experimental evidence on the impact of secondary education subsidies on the timing, the quantity, and the quality of children in a low-income context, leveraging a randomized controlled trial and 14-year longitudinal follow up that includes state-of-the-art cognitive development measurements tailored to our context. For females, receiving a secondary education subsidy (a scholarship) delays childbearing and marriage, as well as reduces unwanted pregnancies. When female scholarship recipients marry and have children, they are more likely to marry a partner with tertiary education and their children have better early childhood development outcomes. In particular, we document a sizable reduction in under-three mortality as well as meaningful cognitive development gains once children are of school age. The primary mechanism seems to be that more-educated caregivers have the knowledge and skills to stimulate their children’s cognitive development and safeguard their health. In contrast, we find no evidence of impact for the children of male scholarship recipients. This is driven by the fact that male scholarship recipients marry “down”, so the caregiver of their children (typically the mother) is not more educated. Together, these results suggest a key role for maternal education (and maternal education alone) in child outcomes. We estimate the benefit-cost ratio of secondary school scholarships and find that the impact on child survival alone is sufficient to make the scholarship a highly cost-effective investment.
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• Working paper 演講者簡介 : Professor Haishi Li received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago in 2021. He is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong. His research interests are International Trade, International Macroeconomics and Regional Economics.