70 percent of the rural population in sub-Saharan Africa does not use adequate sanitation facilities. In rural Benin, as much as 95 percent of the population has no access to improved sanitation. This paper explores why households remain without latrines analyzing a representative sample of 2000...

Although the literature on emission inequality is abundant, this study will differentiate itself by focusing on emission inequalities at the household level due to the disparity in household expenditure profiles. We further separate measures on emission inequality based on household...

We assess the case for universal child care programs in the context of a Norwegian reform which led to a large-scale expansion of subsidized child care. We use non-linear difference-in-differences methods to estimate the quantile treatment effects of the reform. We find that the effects of the...

Proficiency in the language spoken by the majority population may be crucial for the cognitive development of children from immigrant families. High-quality child care is believed to promote such language skills, and it is thus of concern that children from immigrant families are...

How does class size in compulsory school affect peoples’ long run education and earnings? We use maximum class size rules and Norwegian administrative registries allowing us to observe outcomes up to age 48. We do not find any indication of beneficial effects of class size reduction in...

Whether increasing resource use in schools has a positive effect on pupil performance has occupied governments, parents and researchers for decades. A main challenge when trying to answer this question is to separate the effects of school resources from the effects of pupils' family background,...

Despite important policy implications associated with the allocation of education resources, evidence on the effectiveness of school inputs remains inconclusive. In part, this is due to endogenous allocation; families sort themselves non-randomly into school districts and school districts...

This paper analyzes housing market reactions to the release of previously unpublished information on school quality. Using the sharp discontinuity in the information environment allows us to study price changes within school catchment areas, thus controlling for neighborhood unobservables. We...

There is a heated debate in the US and Canada, as well as in many European countries, about a move towards subsidized, universally accessible child care. At the same time, studies on universal child care and child development are scarce, limited to short-run outcomes, and the findings are mixed....

Two districts of Oslo started to offer five-year-old children free preschool four hours a day. We analyze the effect of this intervention on the school performance of the children from immigrant families 10 years later (age 16). Our difference-in-difference approach takes advantage of the...