Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World (1999) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
5 School Qulatiy, Student Achievement, and Fertility in Developing Countries
5 School Qulatiy, Student Achievement, and Fertility in Developing Countries
Pages 105-137
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 105... ...
Moreover, evidence is incomplete concerning the likely impacts of improved school quality on fertility and other socioeconomic outcomes.
|
From page 106... ...
. The present discussion focuses on the basic cognitive skills school curricula are designed to impart, but occasional reference is made to other benefits of schooling as well.
|
From page 107... ...
Figure 5-1 provides a visual framework for conceptualizing the relationships among school quality, school attainment, cognitive skills, and socioeconomic outcomes. At the top of the diagram, school, child, and family characteristics influence both schooling and other socioeconomic outcomes.
|
From page 109... ...
However, it is intended only to provide a basic framework, not a complete picture. The next subsection presents a formal economic model of the determinants of school quality, school attainment, and the acquisition of cognitive skills that will prove useful in the literature assessment presented in the next section.
|
From page 110... ...
In particular, it takes the position that a model of rational behavior is needed to ensure that proper statistical procedures are used in attempting to estimate the impact of school characteristics and school policies on educational outcomes and of schooling and cognitive skills on socioeconomic outcomes. The argument is quite simple.
|
From page 111... ...
relates the child's cognitive skills to employment income in either time period: Yc = 7rA (5.5) where ~ can be thought of as the productivity of cognitive skills in the labor market.
|
From page 112... ...
of their children's income from working and when the value of cognitive skills in the labor market (7~) is higher.
|
From page 113... ...
What happens is that parents, in response to a lower base price or higher child learning efficiency, shift to higher quality, which raises their children's cognitive skills without changing years of schooling. By opting for higher quality instead of more years of schooling, parents avoid a cost associated with the latter a reduction in the length of time a child works during time period 1 (see equation (5.3~.
|
From page 114... ...
that affect the acquisition of cognitive skills. What policy makers want to know, and analysts need to estimate, is the magnitude of the various it's.
|
From page 115... ...
These tastes are rarely measured, and any effect they have on learning efficiency (e.g., such parents help children more with schoolwork) would be reflected in the error term u, leading to positive correlation with S
|
From page 116... ...
WHAT IS KNOWN ABOUT THE IMPACT OF SCHOOL QUALITY ON LEARNING AND YEARS OF SCHOOLING? The simple model presented in the previous section suggests that the impact of school quality on students' cognitive skills operates in two ways raising years of schooling attained and increasing learning per year of schooling.
|
From page 117... ...
A few other school or teacher characteristics look promising, but their effect is less certain because it is based on only two of the four reviews (radio instruction, school library, nutrition and feeding program, teacher's cognitive skills) or because the results for that characteristic are mixed (teacher education, physical facilities)
|
From page 118... ...
The statistical problems raised at the end of the previous section are rarely considered in the literature.l3 Moreover, even with a rich set of data and careful use of sophisticated statistical methods, it is almost impossible to eliminate completely all potential sources of bias. In principle, the best method for overcoming almost all sources of bias is randomized trials of specific educational interventions.
|
From page 119... ...
150f course, as any economist could point out, raising years of schooling entails opportunity costs of time, which must be balanced against the benefits of increased cognitive skills. 16Studies in which the results do not change after statistical methods are used to account for endogeneity and selectivity are Cox and Jimenez (1991)
|
From page 120... ...
These countries urgently need national testing of cognitive skills to see what students are really learning. These assessments can also lower the cost of collecting data for research purposes, since testing children is a major cost of such research.
|
From page 121... ...
When children, particularly daughters, reach childbearing age, their increased levels of schooling and higher cognitive skills per year of schooling may well lead them to have fewer children (see also Chapter 2~. This effect of school quality on fertility will not manifest itself until many years after school quality changes.
|
From page 122... ...
An increase in Pc in that expression can be interpreted as an increase in the price of child quantity (if quality is fixed) or an increase in the price of child quality (if quantity is fixed)
|
From page 123... ...
Impact of School Quality on Future Fertility Decisions of Today's Children The previous subsection focuses on the impact of school quality on the fertility decisions made by today's parents, but it also explains that parents are likely to increase the average education levels of their children if school quality improves. When these children become adults, they will make their own fertility decisions, which will be influenced by the higher levels of human capital they have as a result of past improvements in school quality.
|
From page 124... ...
and the labor market (arrow 0) .21 Cognitive skills also affect women's ability to promote child quality, that is child health and schooling (arrow p)
|
From page 125... ...
A final point, noted earlier, is that it is also possible for fertility to affect schooling outcomes; a female student who has a child while in school may have to leave school. This arrow is dashed to indicate reverse causality.
|
From page 126... ...
Because such tastes are not easily observed, this possibility further complicates attempts to understand the relationship between schooling and fertility in both developed and developing countries. EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE ON THE IMPACT OF SCHOOL QUALITY AND FERTILITY Impact on Current Decisions of Today's Parents The present review revealed no empirical work that explicitly addresses the impact of school quality on the current fertility decisions of today's parents in developing countries.
|
From page 127... ...
Knowledge of the relative importance of these pathways and of the distinct contributions (if any) of specific types of cognitive skills would provide a much clearer picture of the role played by school quality in affecting future fertility, and might even demonstrate how changes in school curriculum could lead to reductions in fertility.
|
From page 128... ...
This finding suggests that either values, fertility knowledge, or perhaps cognitive skills other than literacy and numeracy can play a role in reducing fertility beyond the role played by the acquisition of basic cognitive skills. Oliver's findings can be interpreted in terms of Figure 5-3.
|
From page 129... ...
Finally, although the attempt to relate fertility reduction to specific changes in school quality is particularly valuable, the study does not address aspects of school quality that are likely to change a child's values. This is an admittedly difficult task, and it is questionable whether any existing data could be used to investigate this aspect of schooling and fertility.
|
From page 130... ...
Reading comprehension has an important effect, but mathematics skills have no significant effect, and even when both of these variables are included in the regression, years of schooling still has a strong independent effect. Unfortunately, Thomas' South African data cannot be used to examine how specific aspects of school quality determine the acquisition of cognitive skills.
|
From page 131... ...
Randomized evaluations can, in principle, get around almost all of these problems.26 There have apparently been no randomized trials relating schooling to fertility in developing countries, perhaps because the time lag between a schooling intervention and the future fertility outcomes of today's children may be many years. Again, bilateral and multilateral aid agencies need to take the lead on this matter by building randomized evaluations into their development projects.
|
From page 132... ...
For example, the little evidence produced thus far suggests that spending more class time on reading skills and less on mathematics may reduce fertility. However, much more must be learned before such broad policy recommendations can be made, and one must bear in mind that fertility reduction is only one of many different schooling outcomes to be considered when contemplating such changes.
|
From page 133... ...
World Bank Economic Review 9(2)
|
From page 134... ...
Gibbons 1993 The determinants and consequences of the placement of government programs in Indonesia. World Bank Economic Review 7(3)
|
From page 135... ...
New York: Department for Economic and Social Information and Policy Analysis, United Nations. United Nations Development Programme 1990 Human Development Report.
|
From page 136... ...
36 SCHOOL QUALITY, STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT, AND FERTILITY APPENDIX A SIMPLE TWO-PERIOD MODEL OF SCHOOL CHOICE To determine how the optimal (utility-maximizing) value of years of schooling is affected by changes in the parameters of the model given in the main text, assume first that school quality is given exogenously.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.