Most governments provide some public education and must choose how to finance it from fiscal transfers and user fees. I study the effects of a shift from mixed funding to pure fiscal transfers in South African secondary schools. Fee elimination increased enrollment in early grades but decreased...

Teenage motherhood is very high in South Africa. In 2001, 55 per thousand African South African women and 82 per thousand Coloured South African women were teenage mothers as compared to 8 among Indian South Africans and 3 among White South African women. In this paper we use the South African...

In more than half of U.S. states over the past two decades, the implementation of merit aid programs has dramatically reduced net tuition expenses for college-bound students who attend in-state colleges. Although the intention of these programs was to improve access to enrollment for...

About 80% of the world's children live in developing countries. Their well-being as adults depends heavily on the education they receive. School enrollment rates have increased dramatically in developing counties since 1960, but many children still leave school at a young age and often learn...

Historically, most attention in public programs has been given to the resources devoted to the activity, and resources have been used to index both commitment and quality. Education differs from other areas of public expenditure because direct measures of outcomes are available, making it is...