• Media type: E-Book
  • Title: Intergenerational Impacts of Secondary Education : Experimental Evidence from Ghana
  • Contributor: Duflo, Esther [Author]; Dupas, Pascaline [Author]; Spelke, Elizabeth S. [Author]; Walsh, Mark P. [Author]
  • Corporation: National Bureau of Economic Research
  • Published: Cambridge, Mass: National Bureau of Economic Research, July 2024
  • Published in: NBER working paper series ; no. w32742
  • Extent: 1 Online-Ressource; illustrations (black and white)
  • Language: English
  • Keywords: Weiterführende Schule ; Frauen ; Studienfinanzierung ; Wirkungsanalyse ; Kinder ; Frühkindliche Bildung ; Kognition ; Gesundheit ; Generationengerechtigkeit ; Ghana ; Returns to Education ; Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth ; Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration ; Arbeitspapier ; Graue Literatur
  • Reproduction note: Hardcopy version available to institutional subscribers
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  • Description: We provide experimental evidence on the intergenerational impacts of secondary education subsidies in a low-income context, leveraging a randomized controlled trial and 15-year longitudinal follow-up. For young women, receiving a scholarship for secondary school delays childbearing and marriage, and reduces unwanted pregnancies. Female scholarship recipients are more likely to marry a partner with tertiary education and their children have better early childhood development outcomes. In particular, we document a 45% reduction in under-three mortality as well as cognitive development gains of 0.25 standard deviations of test scores once children are of school age. The primary mechanism seems to be that more-educated caregivers have the knowledge and skills to safeguard their children's health and stimulate their cognitive development. In contrast, we find no evidence of a positive impact for the children of male scholarship recipients, who tend to marry less educated partners. Together, these results suggest a key role for maternal education in child outcomes. We also estimate the cost-benefit ratio for secondary school scholarships and find that the impact on child survival alone is sufficient to make them a highly cost-effective investment