School Inputs, Household Substitution, and Test Scores

Das, Jishnu ; Dercon, Stefan ; Habyarimana, James ; Krishnan, Pramila ; Muralidharan, Karthik ; Sundararaman, Venkatesh

关键词: AID;    BASIC EDUCATION;    BLOCK GRANT;    BLOCK GRANTS;    CASH PAYMENTS;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-5629
RP-ID  :  WPS5629

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Empirical studies of the relationshipbetween school inputs and test scores typically do notaccount for the fact that households will respond to changesin school inputs. This paper presents a dynamic householdoptimization model relating test scores to school andhousehold inputs, and tests its predictions in two verydifferent low-income country settings -- Zambia and India.The authors measure household spending changes and studenttest score gains in response to unanticipated as well asanticipated changes in school funding. Consistent with theoptimization model, they find in both settings thathouseholds offset anticipated grants more than unanticipatedgrants. They also find that unanticipated school grants leadto significant improvements in student test scores butanticipated grants have no impact on test scores. Theresults suggest that naïve estimates of public educationspending on learning outcomes that do not account foroptimal household responses are likely to be considerablybiased if used to estimate parameters of an educationproduction function.