We combine phone-survey data from 2,200 students collected in July-August of 2020 with student-level administrative data from 54 schools in four Northwestern provinces of Cambodia to investigate the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for grade 9 students. These students were particularly...

During recent years (2004-2008) the proportion of working children in sub-Saharan Africa has increased (Diallo et al. 2010). At the same time, there has been a shift in the patterns of livelihoods, whereby households rely more on sources of income from outside their own farms. When the adult in...

Do countries with less democratic forms of government necessarily have lower literacy rates as a consequence? Using a random sample of 4,600+ individuals from military archives in Portugal, we show that 20-year old males were twice as likely to end up literate under an authoritarian regime than...

Using the expansion of a large-scale health insurance program in Mexico and variation in local rainfall levels, I estimate whether the program-induced increase in healthcare coverage protected the educational attainment of primary school children in the event of adverse climatic shocks. Results...

This paper studies the effect of womens higher education on fertility outcomes in Ethiopia. We exploit an abrupt increase in the supply of tertiary education induced by a liberalisation policy. Using an age discontinuity in the exposure to higher education reform, we find that education lowers...

We evaluate the impact of deliberative dialogues about girls' education with groups of parents, teachers, and girls on the education outcomes of girls in rural Zimbabwe. Dialog-based engagement campaigns increased mathematics performance and school enrolment. In later periods, the program was...

This study investigates the long-term effect of the density of the elite - the highest educated - during the period 1075-1919 on today's educational attainment and economic performance in Vietnam. Using nearly 20,000 elites, including 17,061 junior bachelors and bachelors, and 2,895 doctors who...

The persistently high employment share of the informal sector makes entrepreneurship a necessity for youth in many developing countries. We exploit exogenous variation in the implementation of Rwanda's entrepreneurship education reform in secondary schools to evaluate its effect on student...

This paper explores whether the poor performance of many micro-enterprises can be explained by a lack of basic business skills. We randomized the offer of a free, 48-hour business skills course to female entrepreneurs in rural Mexico. We find that those assigned to treatment earn higher profits,...

We study the effects of explosive growth in the Bangladeshi ready-made garments industry on the lives on Bangladeshi women. We compare the marriage, childbearing, school enrollment and employment decisions of women who gain greater access to garment sector jobs to women living further away from...