Abstract

This paper proposes two related measures of educational inequality: one for educational achievement and another for educational opportunity. The former is the simple variance (or standard deviation) of test scores. Its selection is informed by consideration of two measurement issues that have typically been overlooked in the literature: the implications of the standardization of test scores for inequality indices, and the possible sample selection biases arising from the Program of International Student Assessment (PISA) sampling frame. The measure of inequality of educational opportunity is given by the share of the variance in test scores that is explained by pre-determined circumstances. Both measures are computed for the 57 countries in which PISA surveys were conducted in 2006. Inequality of opportunity accounts for up to 35 percent of all disparities in educational achievement. It is greater in (most of) continental Europe and Latin America than in Asia, Scandinavia, and North America. It is uncorrelated with average educational achievement and only weakly negatively correlated with per capita gross domestic product. It correlates negatively with the share of spending in primary schooling, and positively with tracking in secondary schools. Document type: Book

Abstract

This paper employs nationally representative household survey data on parents of adult individuals to analyze the intergenerational transmission of education in nine Sub-Saharan African countries. The paper provides the levels, trends, and patterns of intergenerational persistence of educational attainment over 50 years, with a special focus on gender differences. The study finds a declining cohort trend in the intergenerational educational persistence in all the countries, particularly after the 1960s. The increase in educational mobility coincides with drastic changes in educational systems and a huge investment in human capital accumulation in the region following independence. Nevertheless, the education of parents' remains a strong determinant of educational outcomes among the children in all the countries. Ghana, Guinea, Nigeria, and Uganda experienced the highest intergenerational mobility, and the Comoros and Madagascar the lowest. In all the sample countries, more mobility is observed in the lower tail of the distribution of education. Intergenerational educational persistence is strong from mothers to children, and the effect is more pronounced among daughters than sons. The results highlight the need for targeted redistributive policies that improve intergenerational mobility in the region. Document type: Book

Abstract

This article is motivated by the remarkable observation that children of land-rich households are often more likely to be in work than the children of land-poor households. The vast majority of working children in developing economies are in agricultural work, predominantly on farms operated by their families. Land is the most important store of wealth in agrarian societies, and it is typically distributed very unequally. These facts challenge the common presumption that child labor emerges from the poorest households. This article suggests that this apparent paradox can be explained by failures of the markets for labor and land. Credit market failure will tend to weaken the force of this paradox. These effects are modeled and estimates obtained using survey data from rural Pakistan and Ghana. The main result is that the wealth paradox persists for girls in both countries, whereas for boys it disappears after conditioning on other covariates. Document type: Article