Lifelong learning is increasingly being recognized as a primary factor for knowledge diffusion and productivity growth. However, little economic evidence exists on the economic value of lifelong learning for the individual, especially in developing countries. This paper contributes to remedy...

This paper outlines an extension of the Human Capital Index that addresses the specific challenges in education and health faced by countries in Europe and Central Asia. Good basic education will not be enough, as job markets today demand higher levels of human capital than in the past. As the...

The reversal of the gender gap in educational attainment is becoming a global phenomenon. Its drivers, however, are not well understood and remain largely untested empirically. This paper develops a unified conceptual framework that allows to formulate and test two main hypotheses for the...

Inequalities in the opportunity to obtain a good education in low-income countries are widely understood to be related to household resources and schooling quality. Yet, to date, most researchers have investigated the contributions of these two factors separately. This paper considers them...

This paper studies the impact of PROBEMS, a scholarship program in Mexico aimed at improving graduation rates and test scores among upper secondary school students from poor backgrounds. The identification strategy is the random allocation into the program, which took place in 2009. The strategy...

School dropout is a growing concern in Central America, and in Latin America as a whole, because of its consequences for economic productivity, the inclusiveness of growth, social cohesion, and increasing youth risks. This paper utilizes more than two decades of household survey data to...

A randomized control trial was conducted to study whether providing 10th grade students with information about the returns to upper secondary and tertiary education, and a source of financial aid for tertiary education, can contribute to improve student performance. The study finds that the...

This study examines trends in school dropout at the upper secondary education level across Latin America over the past two decades, and attempts to identify factors influencing these rates. The methodology contributes to the existing literature by employing repeated cross sections of data to...

Shortly following its independence in 1991, Tajikistan suffered a violent civil war. This study explores the effect of this conflict on education and labor market outcomes for men and women. The results are based on the data from the 2003 and 2007 Tajik Living Standards Measurement Surveys that...

This paper constructs two longitudinal datasets that record students' test scores in a national standardized exam in Mexico and track students from the end of primary (Grade 6) to the end of lower (Grade 9) and upper (Grade 12) secondary school, then to university and labor market participation...