School enrollment has universally increased over the past 25 years in low-income countries. However, enrolling in school does not guarantee that children learn. A large share of children in low-income countries learn little, and they complete their primary education lacking even basic reading,...

Improving education outcomes by disseminating information to parents and thereby encouraging them to become more actively engaged in school oversight is attractive, since it can be done relatively cheaply. This study evaluates the impact of alternative approaches to disseminating information...

This paper reports on a randomized experiment to investigate the long-term effects of a primary school scholarship program in rural Cambodia. In 2008, fourth-grade students in 207 randomly assigned schools (103 treatment, 104 control) received scholarships based on the students' academic...

Substantial work has demonstrated that early nutrition and home environments, including the degree to which children receive cognitive stimulation and emotional support from parents, play a profound role in influencing early childhood development. Yet, less work has documented the joint...

Based on a randomized evaluation, the paper shows that a household-targeted Philippine cash transfer program significantly raised the local price of key foods relevant for child nutritional status. This shift in prices increased stunting among young nonbeneficiary children by 34 percent (11...

This paper analyzes the relationship between whether a young person has a disability, the poverty status of their household, and their school participation using 11 household surveys from nine developing countries. Between 1 and 2 percent of the population is identified as having a disability....

What major insights have emerged from development economics in the past decade, and how do they matter for the World Bank? This challenging question was recently posed by World Bank Group President David Malpass to the staff of the Development Research Group. This paper assembles a set of 13...

A family preference for sons over daughters may manifest itself in different ways, including higher mortality, worse health status, or lower educational attainment among girls. This study focuses on one measure of son preference in the developing world, namely the likelihood of continued...

In many low-income countries, teachers do not master the subject they are teaching, and children learn little while attending school. Using unique data from nationally representative surveys of schools in seven Sub-Saharan African countries, this paper proposes a methodology to assess the effect...

This paper experimentally examines the impacts of a large-scale government program that increased the supply and quality of community preschools in rural Cambodia. The construction of new preschool facilities was paired with two demand-side interventions designed to stimulate additional...