The demand for primary schooling in Madagascar: Price, quality, and the choice between public and private providers

Abstract

We estimate a discrete choice model of primary schooling and simulate policy alternatives for rural Madagascar. Among school quality factors, the results highlight the negative impacts on schooling demand of poor facility quality and the use of multigrade teaching (several grades being taught simultaneously by one teacher) in public schools. Simulations indicate the feasibility of reducing multigrade in public schools by adding teachers and classrooms, a policy that would lead to modest improvements in overall enrollments and would disproportionately benefit poor children. Given much higher price elasticities for poorer households, raising school fees to cover some of the additional costs would strongly counteract these favorable distributional outcomes. An alternative policy of consolidation of primary schools combined with multigrade reduction or other quality improvements is likely to be ineffective because of the strongly negative impact of distance to school. JEL: I2, O15

Conservation Messages in Speech Bubbles–Evaluation of an Environmental Education Comic Distributed in Elementary Schools in Madagascar

“…This translates to the education system. Children from well-off families attend privately funded quality schools, leaving the majority of school children to overcrowded and underfunded schools financed by the state [5,6]. Madagascar has a fast growing population of ~23 million with a growth rate of ~2.6% per year (ranked 25 out of 233 states), a birth rate of 3.3% (ranked 33 out of 233 states), a low median age of 18.72 years and a high mean adolescent birth rate of ~146 out of 1000 (women giving birth in the age range 15-19 years) for the last 25 years [2,7].…”

The rich or the poor: who gains from public education spending in Ghana?

“…In this section we derive and present results on a school choice model that enables us to understand behavioural responses to public spending. Following previous authors (Gertler, Locay and Sanderson 1987;Gertler and Glewwe 1990;Younger 1999;and Glick and Sahn 2001), we assume that households derive utility from the human capital of children, which depends on schooling and on the consumption of all other goods (net income). Confronted with the decision to enrol in public school, private school, and non-enrolment, parents choose the option that yields the highest utility.…”

“…This is what Glick and Sahn (2001) referred to as representing a production function of human capital in which both school and household variables are inputs. Substituting (3.4) into (3.3) yields…”

Does access to secondary education affect primary schooling? Evidence from India

“…This paper aims to empirically test the hypothesis that access to secondary schools affects primary schooling outcomes. Although the importance of access to schooling in determining educational outcomes has been well recognized in the literature (Duflo, 2001 and2004; Glick and Sahn, 2006), most of it is on access to primary schooling and its effect on children. Therefore, a major supply side intervention for policymakers has been to increase the availability of primary schools to the community to encourage more school participation by the children.…”

“…However, we include them because we posit that marginal changes in distances matter more when the distances are closer. 12 The features of school quality considered in the analysis are: type of structure, main flooring material, whether the school has classrooms, number of classrooms, whether the classes are held inside classrooms, whether the school has usable blackboards, whether desks are provided to the students, whether mid-day meal is provided, and the proportion of teachers present on the day of survey.…”