This paper tests for the motives for private income transfers. We consider two motives: altruism and exchange. The question of private-transfer motives is important because such motivation can influence the effects of public income transfers on the distribution of income. Using a household survey for Peru, we find that transfer amounts received increase with recipient pre-transfer income, which contradicts a key prediction of the strong form of the altruism hypothesis but is consistent with exchange. We also find that capital market imperfections are likely to be an important cause of private transfers, and that social security benefits "crowd out" the incidence of private transfers.

on Aging. We would like to thank Richard Arnott and Andrew Foster for valuable comments on a previous draft. We also wish to thank seminar participants at the RAND Corporation, University of Southern California and the 1997 Northeast Universities Development Consortium for useful comments on earlier drafts. Homi Kharas provided us with the FIES data set. A GAUSS program which replicates the empirical work can be obtained at www.ssc.wisc.edu/~bhansen. Hansen thanks the National Science Foundation and the Sloan Foundation for research support. The views expressed here are the authors' own and should not be attributed to the Government of the Philippines.

This article examines how decentralizing educational responsibility to communities and schools affects student outcomes. It uses the example of El Salvador's Community-Managed Schools Program ^Education con Participation de la Comunidad, EDUCO), which was designed to expand rural education rapidly following El Salvador's civil war. Achievement on standardized tests and attendance are compared for students in EDUCO schools and students in traditional schools. The analysis controls for student characteristics, school and classroom inputs, and endogeneity, using the proportion of EDUCO schools and traditional schools in a municipality as identifying instrumental variables. The article finds that enhanced community and parental involvement in EDUCO schools has improved students' language skills and diminished student absences, which may have long-term effects on achievement. Central governments in developing countries usually play a major role in allocating educational resources. Even when authority is delegated to subnational levels, such as provinces or municipalities, individual school administrators and parents play only a limited pact. This kind of centralized structure may work best for regulating and administering large systems uniformly, but it may also be ineffective and expensive when school needs differ widely across communities and when there are diseconomies of scale. Moreover, a centralized system can stifle the initiative of those who are most critical in affecting school outcomesteachers, principals, and parents. Despite the compelling case for school-based management, there is relatively little empirical evidence documenting its merits in developing countries. 1 The main reason is that these administrative arrangements have only recently been 1. Two exceptions are James, King, and Suryadi (1996) for Indonesia, and Jimenez and Paqueo (1996) for the Philippines. Both studies conclude that community-based involvement improves efficiency.

About 3ieThe International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) is an international grant-making NGO promoting evidence-informed development policies and programmes. We are the global leader in funding, producing and synthesising high-quality evidence of what works, for whom, why and at what cost. We believe that high-quality, policy-relevant evidence will help make development more effective and improve people's lives. 3ie in-house systematic reviews 3ie in-house systematic reviews appraise and synthesise the available high-quality evidence on the effectiveness of social and economic development interventions in low-and middle-income countries. 3ie's specialists follow scientifically recognised methods in conducting these reviews. They are quality assured according to internationally accepted standards. They are peer reviewed by members of an expert advisory group and three anonymous external reviewers. 3ie is providing leadership in demonstrating rigorous and innovative review methodologies, such as using theory-based approaches suited to informing policy and programming in the dynamic and challenging contexts of low-and middle-income countries.About this systematic review summary report 3ie systematic review summary reports distil key analyses and present the findings and recommendations of a full systematic review for policymakers and programme managers. The impact of education programmes on learning and school participation in low-and middle-income countries is based on a full review, Interventions for improving learning outcomes and access to education in low-and middle-income countries: a systematic review, which is available on the 3ie website. The summary report was peer-reviewed internally and by members of the expert advisory group convened for the full review.

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