Identifying National Level Education Reforms in Developing Settings: An Application to Ethiopia

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E S Identifying National Level Education Reforms in ABSTRACT Identifying National Level Education Reforms in Developing Settings: An Application to EthiopiaIncreasing enrollment in primary education has been at the center of international education policy for well over a decade. In developing parts of the world, significant increases in primary enrollment are often generated by large national level programs, which can simultaneously promote overcrowding and reductions in education quality. However, to analyze the trade-off between increased enrollment and potential reductions in quality one must first identify and evaluate the impact of the national reform on schooling. This paper provides a method with which these types of reforms can be identified in developing settings using both temporal and geographic variation, and readily available data. The method is applied to an early 1990s reform in Ethiopia based around the release of the Education and Training Policy, which removed schooling fees from grades one to ten. The model estimates that the reform led to an increase in schooling of at least 1.2 years, and provides initial evidence that the increased enrollment in Ethiopia outweighed any cost due to reductions in quality.JEL Classification: I25, I28, O55

Free Primary Education, Schooling, and Fertility: Evidence from Ethiopia

“…find that over 80 percent of adult respondents still live in their region of birth, suggesting that migration is not overly prevalent. Furthermore, Chicoine (2016) shows that analysis of the reform's impact on years of schooling using the LSMS data yield estimates similar to those using the DHS data from this paper, and that the estimates are not sensitive to three separate strategies to take into account the available migration data in the LSMS dataset. This is further evidence that the distinction between today's zone of residence and place of birth is unlikely to significantly impact the results.…”

“…The explicit equations used to calculate the full set of intensity measures (Izy) are discussed in detail in the appendix ofChicoine (2016).…”

Free Primary Education, Schooling, and Fertility: Evidence from Ethiopia

“…A violation of this assumption would require the unlikely scenario that higher ability families were moving to areas that were worse off at the time of implementation. Furthermore, as mentioned previously, Chicoine (2016) finds evidence that estimates adjusting for migration using three different techniques yield results similar to the baseline estimates, and also finds no evidence of a similar effect on education in settings where no reform occurred (Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, and Mali).…”

“…Furthermore, Chicoine (2016) shows that analysis of the reform's impact on years of schooling using the LSMS data yield estimates similar to those using the DHS data from this paper, and that the estimates are not sensitive to three separate strategies to take into account the available migration data in the LSMS dataset. This is further evidence that the distinction between today's zone of residence and place of birth is unlikely to significantly impact the results.…”

“…The second largest year-to-year growth was in 1995 and coincided with the implementation of the ETP; grade one enrollment increased by 317,000 relative to the previous year, an increase of 28 percent. These reforms ultimately led to an average increase in schooling of more than one full year, at least a six percentage point increase in passing the grade eight exam, and a roughly ten percentage point increase in the literacy rate (Chicoine, 2016).…”