This study combines household survey data from the Beninese Demographic and Health Survey with school supply statistics in order to investigate regional and gender disparities in primary school attendance rates in Benin. Despite almost unparalleled increases in enrolment since the 1990s, Benin...

We study the impact of conflict on both the extensive and the intensive margin of child labor in Afghanistan. We identify and test two main mechanisms. First, if conflict reduces a household income through a decline in parent's compensations, child labor may insure against the decrease in...

We use data from the Spanish sample of the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies to analyze the effect of the LOGSE (Spanish acronym for General Law of the Education System) reform passed in 1990 on numeracy and literacy proficiency of the adult population. The LOGSE...

This paper studies how targeted cash transfers to women affect their empowerment. We use a novel identification strategy to measure women's willingness to pay to receive cash transfers instead of their partner receiving it. We apply this among women living in poor households in urban Macedonia....

We explore the extent to which starting primary school earlier by up to one year can help shield children from the detrimental, long-term developmental consequences of having an ill or disabled sibling. Using data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children, we employ a Regression...

Using administrative data from the urban Mexican Oportunidades program, this paper analyzes why poor households choose less education for their children, even when offered financial compensation for school attendance. Each school year, half of recipients forgo income for which they are eligible...

Eine aktive Teilnahme an Weiterbildungen begünstigt berufliches Vorankommen und reduziert das Risiko eines Jobverlusts. Erstmals zeigt eine neue RWI-Studie, dass die Dauer der Schul- und Berufsausbildung einen ursächlichen Einfluss darauf hat, wie stark Arbeitnehmer sich später weiterbilden....

This paper presents an analysis of the differential role of mortality for the optimal schooling and retirement age when the accumulation of human capital follows the so-called "Ben-Porath mechanism". We set up a life-cycle model of consumption and labor supply at the extensive margin that allows...

We propose an innovation-driven growth model in which education is determined by family background and cognitive ability. We show that compulsory schooling can move a society from elite education to mass education, which then triggers market R&D. This means that our model rationalizes two...

Female secondary school attendance has recently increased in Sub-Saharan Africa and so has the risk of becoming pregnant while attending school. Using panel data in Madagascar, we analyze the impact of teenage pregnancy on young women's human capital. We instrument early pregnancy with the young...

Lottery estimates suggest oversubscribed urban charter schools boost student achievement markedly. But these estimates needn't capture treatment effects for students who haven't applied to charter schools or for students attending charters for which demand is weak. This paper reports estimates...

Studies on the intergenerational transmission of human capital usually assume a one-way spillover from parents to children. But what if children also affect their parents' human capital? Using exogenous variation in education, arising from a Swedish compulsory schooling reform in the 1950s and...

Die G8-Reform zur Verkürzung der Gymnasialschulzeit ist umstritten. Erste Bundesländer wollen inzwischen wieder von der 12-jährigen zur 13-jährigen Schulzeit bis zum Abitur zurückkehren, obwohl es bisher nur wenige verlässliche, empirische Befunde zur Wirkung der G8-Reform gibt. Der...

The paper analyzes a new Honduran conditional cash transfer experiment (Bono 10,000) in which 150 poor villages (of 300) were treated. The transfers were much larger in size than an earlier experiment (Galiani & McEwan, 2013), but yielded smaller full-sample effects on school enrollment, child...

Argentina has traditionally stood out in terms of educational outcomes among its Latin American counterparts. Schooling among older children, however, still shows room for improvement especially among the more vulnerable. Fortunately, the last decade witnessed a sizeable improvement in...