Education Finance| (News and Research 358)
Download Report: Education Finance Watch 2023
The Education Finance Watch (EFW) 2023 updates analyses on trends and patterns of education spending for the past ten years, up to 2021, the second year after the COVID-19 pandemic. As a special theme of this year’s volume, the EFW 2023 sheds light on changes in the school-age population and projects its fiscal implications for the upcoming ten years for selected countries. The EFW 2023 finds that in 2021, low-income countries (LIC) increased year-on-year total education spending (a total of government, households, and official development assistance (ODA)) in real terms. This increase was driven by increased government spending, which reached 50 percent of total education spending, while ODA to LIC decreased in absolute and relative terms. Although the rise was notable, it was insufficient to close the learning gap sustained during the pandemic. Indeed, around the world, countries of all income levels are grappling with pandemic-induced learning loss. The Education Finance Watch is a collaborative effort between the World Bank (WB), the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report, and the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). The EFW aims to provide an analysis of trends, patterns, and issues in education financing worldwide. The EFW uses various sources of education, economic, and financial data from the WB, UIS, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the Organizasion for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Related
- Full Report: Education Finance Watch 2023
- Flyer: Education Finance Watch 2023
- Blog: Governments in low-income countries are spending more on education, but more funding is needed for children who receive the least.
- Brief: Education Finance: Using Money Effectively is Critical to Improving Education
Claudia Goldin wins the Nobel prize in economics
Her work has overturned assumptions about gender equality
On the morning of October 9th the National Bureau of Economic Research circulated a working paper to economists around the world entitled “Why Women Won”. In the paper, Claudia Goldin of Harvard University documents how women achieved equal rights in American workplaces and families. Rather fittingly, a few hours later, Ms Goldin was announced as the winner of this year’s economics Nobel prize for advancing “our understanding of women’s labour-market outcomes”.
Central African Republic: The parents stepping up to fill the teaching gap | The education system in the Central African Republic (CAR) is marked by a severe shortage of qualified teachers. In rural areas, there is an average of 300 pupils per teacher. To counter this, parents are stepping up to fill the gap. Philémon Gondi is the headteacher of a public primary school for girls in Berbérati, in the Mambéré-Kadéi prefecture. The town is the country’s third largest urban centre, but the education system is in crisis.
Unmasking a silent crisis: The impact of COVID-19 on adolescent mental health and skills development | Hoyos, Angel-Urdinola | In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, a concerning trend has emerged that has captured the attention of educators, mental health professionals, and policymakers alike: a marked increase in depression and anxiety among young people that is strongly associated with poor learning outcomes and disengagement from school, especially among adolescents and from vulnerable and minority groups. This unsettling development has been accompanied by a concerning rise in school dropout rates, especially in low- and middle-income countries, raising critical questions about the long-term consequences for the educational and professional trajectories of the younger generation.
The Return on Investing in a College Education in the USA | Vandenbroucke | The costs and benefits of a college education—tuition and higher earnings, respectively—can be thought of as if they were the price and payoff of a financial asset. Tuition costs have risen sharply and outpaced inflation in recent decades. However, the difference in earnings between workers with and workers without college also grew. Estimates of the returns on investing in a college education appear to be significant. In 2020, they ranged from 13.5% to 35.9% across six demographic groups.
Can Mentoring Alleviate Family Disadvantage in Adolescence? A Field Experiment to Improve Labor-Market Prospects | Resnjanskij et al | A mentoring program that aims to improve the labor-market prospects of school-attending adolescents from disadvantaged families by offering them a university-student mentor. An RCT investigates program effectiveness on three outcome dimensions that are highly predictive of later labor-market success: math grades, patience/social skills, and labor-market orientation. For low-SES adolescents, the mentoring increases a combined index of the outcomes by over half a standard deviation after one year, with significant increases in each dimension. Part of the treatment effect is mediated by establishing mentors as attachment figures who provide guidance for the future. Effects on grades and labor-market orientation, but not on patience/social skills, persist three years after program start. By that time, the mentoring also improves early realizations of school-to-work transitions for low-SES adolescents. The mentoring is not effective for higher-SES adolescents. The results show that substituting lacking family support by other adults can help disadvantaged children at adolescent age.
Earnings information and public preferences for university tuition: Evidence from representative experiments | Lergetporer, Woessmann | Earnings information affects public preferences for university tuition. The authors devise representative survey experiments in Germany. Information provision turns a plurality of the population in favor of tuition. Information effects are driven by information-based updating and increased salience. Results hold in a host of robustness tests.
A review of human development and environmental outcomes | Patrinos, Ambasz, Gupta | As we witness the increasing evidence of climate change and its effects on the environment, there is a growing interest in understanding how human development is connected to these environmental changes. While many researchers have explored how the environment influences human capital, literature on the impact of human capital on the environment remains scarce.
Call for Papers:
Returns to Education Turns 50 | Submit a Manuscript to the Journal Education Economics for a Special Issue on the 50th Anniversary of the Returns to Education: An International Comparison | Manuscript deadline: 31 October 2023 | Special Issue Editor: Harry Patrinos, World Bank | Submit An Article | This year is the 50th anniversary of the publication of the book, Returns to Education: An International Comparison, by George Psacharopoulos (assisted by Keith Hinchliffe). Education Economics is publishing a special issue to mark this occasion and the contributions of Professor Psacharopoulos. The focus of this special issue is research on the returns to education. Research on international comparisons and /or returns to education in less developed economies are especially welcome.
Lisbon Economics and Statistics of Education Conference. Lisbon, Portugal, 18-19 January 2024. This 7th edition will continue a very successful tradition of getting together researchers, students, and education analysts, providing a forum to present methodological and applied research and to discuss quantitative results on education analysis. Submit extended abstracts or full papers until the 15th of October 2023 through the conference website: https://lese-conference.org/. The conference will include keynote speakers, roundtables, contributed parallel sessions, organized sessions, and a short course on the machine learning methods in education. The keynote talks will be given by: Simon Burgess (University of Bristol, UK) and Susan Dynarski (Harvard Graduate School of Education, USA. There will be two roundtables: What PIRLS 2021 and PISA 2022 Tell Us About Pandemic Learning Losses with Harry Anthony Patrinos (moderator, World Bank), Kristoff De Witte (KU Leuven), Maciej Jakubowski (University of Warsaw and Evidence Institute), and João Marôco (ISPA); After the Pandemic: What It Will Take to Improve National Education Systems with Nuno Crato (moderator, ISEG), Tommaso Agasisti (Polytechnic University of Milan), Noam Angrist (University of Oxford), and Carla Hearlemans (Maastricht University). Additionally, there is a short course on 17 January on Machine Learning in Education taught by Tommaso Agasisti (Polytechnic University of Milan).
Education, economics and public policy 