East Asia Pacific Economic Update, October 2016: Reducing Vulnerabilities

Key findings

• Growth in developing East Asia and Pacific is expected to remain resilient
• China is expected to continue its gradual transition to slower, but more sustainable, growth
• In the rest of developing East Asia, growth is projected to remain stable
• Overall, developing East Asia is expected to grow at 5.8 percent in 2016
• …recommends that China build on its past success in reducing poverty by improving access to basic public services for the rural population, and for the still growing number of migrants to the cities.
• …report urges policymakers to address widespread malnutrition where it remains. High levels of childhood undernutrition persist in many countries, even relatively affluent ones, and lead to health and cognitive deficits that are difficult to reverse. The report recommends coordinated measures across a range of areas, including early childhood development programs and micronutrient interventions…

The Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences 2016

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2016 to Oliver Hart (Harvard University) and Bengt Holmström (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) for their contributions to contract theory.  Modern economies are held together by innumerable contracts. The new theoretical tools created by Hart and Holmström are valuable to the understanding of real-life contracts and institutions, as well as potential pitfalls in contract design…

The importance of Return on Investment in higher education

With the threat of another global economic downturn looming large and student debts rising at rapid rates, higher education is now more under the spotlight than ever before. Passion or interest in a particular field no longer suffices for the aspiring student when shopping for the best university program. As budgets tighten, they’ve become more selective in the process, and see Return on Investment (ROI) as the deciding factor…

Free university education: Unequal and poor

In Africa, SA is the only country with a diverse and differentiated higher education system. In a 2016 ranking of universities in emerging economies, The Times Higher Education Supplement places three SA universities in the top 12 (UCT 4th, Wits 6th and Stellenbosch 11th). China has five in the top 12; Taiwan has two; Brazil and Russia have only one each; and India and the rest of Africa did not have one university in this ranking…

Why Has Ed Tech Made So Little Difference?

Technology in education is a puzzle, and, for those who see the promise, a source of endless frustration.  I’ve just returned from a big OECD-sponsored meeting in Jerusalem.  The question on the table was whether education policy makers, technologists and entrepreneurs, working together, can force a breakthrough, a way of using technology in schools that will result in a real leap forward in the productivity of an industry that has seen no improvements in productivity in living memory, one of the few industries that seem to be impervious to the steady advance of digital technologies…

The Short-Term Effects of School Consolidation on Student Achievement

We exploit variation stemming from school consolidations in Denmark from 2010- 2011 to analyze the impact on student achievement as measured by test scores. For each student we observe enrollment and test scores one year prior to school consolidation and up to four years after. We find that school consolidation has adverse effects on achievement in the short run and that these effects are most pronounced for students exposed to school closings. Furthermore, students initially enrolled in small schools experience the most detrimental effects. The effects appear to weaken over time, suggesting that part of the effect is due to disruption…

Letting girls learn: WBG helps advance education for adolescent girls

In April 2016, President Jim Kim announced that the World Bank Group (WBG) would invest $2.5 billion over five years in education projects directly benefiting adolescent girls (aged 12-17). This was in response to a call from U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama for more support to adolescent girls’ education. Since then, the WBG had already committed $530 million in three high-need countries: Lebanon, Pakistan, and Nigeria…

Girls’ Learning and Empowerment – The Role of School Environments

UNGEI and ODI have teamed up to develop a rigorous review on the impact of school environments on girls’ learning outcomes. Our ‘Girls’ Learning and Empowerment – The Role of School Environments’ rigorous review report finds that, despite major increases in girls’ access to education and improvement in girls’ learning outcomes over the past decade, gender inequalities persist, and are particularly stark in many low-income countries. Given the developmental benefits of education – for individual girls, their families and communities, and wider society – these inequalities represent significant lost opportunities…

Female education and household per capita income: evidence from 3D surface maps

Women have been the crucial socio-economic sufferer, which is especially true for those women who live in the rural areas of Third-world developing countries. It has been established through extensive research that women represent the major percentage of poor on the global landscape. The answer why this has to be so is not very difficult. Gender biases, gender exploitation, low income, deprivation, violation of basic rights are all social ailments that female has to face in society. In this scenario, female education has significant role. With female education, poverty reduces and socio-economic status of the households improves. This paper investigates the critical linkage between female education and per capita income of households in a small village of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistan. Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software (CAQDAS) was used to develop three dimensional digital models of the female education and per capita income of the households. Based on the these models, three dimensional 3D surface maps were prepared for female education and per capita income for the whole village which revealed that parts of village with higher female education had higher per capita income compared to parts of village with low female education. The paper clearly addresses the significance of female education to improve socio-economic fabric of the rural society of Pakistan…

Bridging the Skills Gap: Insights from Employers, Educators, and Youth in Latin America

Nearly one-third of the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) population is between the ages of 15 and 24. Although the region has made great strides in increasing access to secondary education, 20 percent of youth—20 million people—are neither working nor in school. Excluded, disaffected youth are cut off from productive jobs and instead turn to informal activities, such as street trading or service bartering, and even crime and violence (World Bank 2015a)…