Wage-differentials by education of men and women are examined from African household surveys to suggest private wage returns to schooling. It is commonly asserted that returns are highest at primary school levels and decrease at secondary and postsecondary levels, whereas private returns in six...

Human development, in combination with technology, yields economic growth which, in turn, is necessary to generate further advances in human development. This paper focuses on the first channel above and finds the relationship significant. Secondly, the paper tries to investigate what affects...

We examine the channels through which a randomized early childhood intervention in Colombia led to significant gains in cognitive and socio-emotional skills among a sample of disadvantaged children. We estimate production functions for cognitive and socio-emotional skills as a function of...

Data from two surveys of twins in China are used to contribute to an improved understanding of the role of economic development in affecting gender differences in the trends in, levels of, and returns to schooling observed in China and in many developing countries in recent decades. In...

I illustrate the variety of approaches to development issues microeconomists employ, focusing on studies that illuminate and quantify the major mechanisms posited by growth theorists who highlight the role of education in fostering growth. I begin with a basic issue: what are the returns to...

Population policies are defined here as voluntary programs which help people control their fertility and expect to improve their lives. There are few studies of the long-run effects of policy-induced changes in fertility on the welfare of women, such as policies that subsidize the diffusion and...

Child labor exists because it is the best response people can find in intolerable circumstances. Poverty and child labor are mutually reinforcing: because their parents are poor, children must work and not attend school, and then grow up poor. Child labor has two important special features....

In the last two decades, primary and secondary school enrollment rates have declined in Nigeria while enrollment rates in post-secondary school have increased. This paper estimates from the General Household Survey for Nigeria the private returns to schooling associated with levels of...

The study examines the effects of gender and credit constraints on rural students' advancement to secondary education, which is arguably the major bottleneck in Thailand's education system. Credit constraints are measured indirectly through rainfall variation, availability of informal lenders in...

Economists have argued that increasing female schooling positively influences the labor supply of married women by inducing a faster rise in market productivity relative to non-market productivity. I use the Nigerian Labor Force Survey to investigate how own and husband's schooling affect...