Working Paper: NBER ID: w21063
Authors: Pedro Carneiro; Oswald Koussihoud; Nathalie Lahire; Costas Meghir; Corina Mommaerts
Abstract: The impact of school resources on the quality of education in developing countries may depend crucially on whether resources are targeted efficiently. In this paper we use a randomized experiment to analyze the impact of a school grants program in Senegal, which decentralized a portion of the country’s education budget. We find large positive effects on test scores at younger grades that persist at least two years. We show that these effects are concentrated among schools that focused funds on human resources improvements rather than school materials, suggesting that teachers and principals may be a central determinant of school quality.
Keywords: school grants; education quality; Senegal; randomized controlled trial
JEL Codes: H52; I22; I25; O15
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| school grants program (I28) | student test scores (I21) |
| targeted funding (I22) | educational quality through improved teaching practices (A21) |
| school grants program (human resources improvements) (I28) | girls' test scores (I24) |
| school grants program (material resources) (I28) | boys' test scores (I24) |
| school grants program (I28) | regional differences in test scores (R11) |