The Millennium Development Goal for primary schooling completion has focused attention on a measurable output indicator to monitor increases in schooling in poor countries. We argue the next step, which moves towards the even more important Millennium Learning Goal, is to monitor outcomes of...

A family preference for sons over daughters may manifest itself in different ways, including higher mortality, worse health status, or lower educational attainment among girls. This study focuses on one measure of son preference in the developing world, namely the likelihood of continued...

Student learning can be raised by school autonomy and parental participation through separate channels, but this paper suggests a mutually supportive effect. Increased school autonomy increases the rent that can be distributed among stakeholders at the school, while institutions for parental...

Recent empirical and theoretical literature sheds light on the disappointing experience with implementation of primary health care programs in developing countries. This article focuses on the evidence showing two weak links in the chain between government spending for services to improve health...

In an earlier article, the authors outline some reasons for the disappointingly small effects of primary health care programs and identified two weak links standing between spending and increased health care. The first was the inability to translate public expenditure on health care into real...

This paper evaluates a primary school scholarship program in Cambodia with two different targeting mechanisms, one based on poverty level and the other on baseline test scores ("merit"). Both targeting mechanisms increased enrollment and attendance. However, only the merit-based targeting...

We use cross-national data to examine the impact of both public spending on health and non-health factors (economic, educational, cultural) in determining child (under-5) and infant mortality. There are two striking findings. First, the impact of public spending on health is quite small, with a...