Volume 29, Number 3 (Summer) 1994
Glewwe, Paul, and Hanan Jacoby. 1994. "Student Achievement and Schooling Choice in
Low Income Countries:
Evidence from Ghana." Journal of Human Resources 29(3):843-864.
In this paper we present new evidence on the impact of school characteristics on student achievement using an unusually rich data set from Ghana. We deal with two potentially important selectivity issues in the developing country context; the sorting of higher ability children into better schools, and high incidence of both delayed school enrollment and early leaving. Our empirical results do not reveal any strong selectivity bias. We also highlight the indirect effects of improving school quality on student achievement through increased grade attainment. A cost-benefit analysis, taking into account these indirect effects, shows that repairing classrooms (a policy option ignored in most education production function studies) is a cost-effective investment in Ghana, relative to providing more instructional materials and improving teacher quality.
Paul Glewwe is an economist at the World Bank and Hanan Jacoby is an assistant professor of economics at the University of Rochester. Funding for this research was provided by the World Bank (RPO 674-57). The views expresses are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the World Bank or affiliated organizations. The authors wish to thank Tracy Jones and Nathalie Leboucher for excellent research assistance. They have benefitted from the comments of Jere Behrman, Margaret Grosh, Emmanuel Jimenez, Marlaine Lockheed, Peter Moock, Walter Oi, George Psacharopoulos, and Wim Vijverberg. The usual disclaimer applies. The data used in this article can be obtained beginning in February 1994 through February 1998 from Paul Glewwe, The World Bank, 1818 H Street N.W., Washington, D.C. 20433.
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