This paper presents new evidence on the impact of school characteristics on secondary student achievement using a rich data set from rural Bangladesh. The authors deal with a potentially important selectivity issue in the South Asian context: the non-random sorting of children into religious...

This paper reports labour market returns to education in Bangladesh using data from recent nationwide household survey. Returns are estimated separately for rural and urban samples, males, females and private-sector employees. Substantial heterogeneity in returns is observed; for example,...

Using detailed micro-data on social relations and networks from rural Bangladesh, this paper examines the social determinants of children's schooling in a developing country. We employ a comprehensive set of controls for parental sociability and NGO membership as proxies for family social...

This paper documents the regional divide in educational facilities between East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and West Pakistan between 1947 and 1971. During this period, the total number of primary schools in East Pakistan declined, leading to overcrowding of existing schools and classrooms. On the...

Using a primary school curricular standard basic mathematics competence test, this paper documents the low level of student achievement amongst 10-18 year old rural children in Bangladesh and tests the extent to which years spent in school increases learning. Our sample includes children...

There has been a proliferation of non-state providers of education services in the developing world. In Bangladesh, for instance, Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee runs more than 40,000 non-formal schools that cater to school-drop outs from poor families or operate in villages where there's...

This paper identifies endogenous social effects in mathematics test performance for eighth graders in rural Bangladesh using information on arsenic contamination of water wells at home as an instrument. In other words, the identification relies on variation in test scores among peers owing to...

Bangladesh has experienced the largest mass poisoning of a population in history owing to contamination of groundwater with naturally occurring inorganic arsenic. Continuous drinking of such metal-contaminated water is highly cancerous; prolonged drinking of such water risks developing diseases...

This article tests for neighbourhood effects on children's schooling, using unique data on rural residential neighbourhoods from Bangladesh. We find that school completion of children is positively and significantly affected by the mean grade completion of other children in the neighbourhood. We...