Volume 36, Number 2 (Spring) 2001
Alderman, Harold, Peter F. Orazem, and Elizabeth M. Paterno. 2001. "School Quality, School Cost, and the Public/Private School Choices of Low-Income Households in Pakistan." Journal of Human Resources 36(2):304-326.
Variation in school attributes, proximity, and fees across neighborhoods is used to identify factors that affect whether poor households send their children to government school, private school, or no school. Analysis shows that even the poorest households use private schools extensively, and that utilization increases with income. Lowering private school fees or distance or resign measured quality raises private school enrollments, partly by transfers from government schools and partly from enrollments of children who otherwise would not have gone to school. The strong demand for private schools is consistent with evidence of greater mathematics and language achievement in private schools than in government schools. These results strongly support an increased role for private delivery of schooling services to poor households in developing countries.
Harold Alderman is a senior researcher with the World Bank, Peter F. Orazem is a professor of economics at Iowa State University, and Elizabeth M. Paterno is a professor of economics at the University of the Philippines-Los Baños. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions are the authors' own and should not be attributed to the World Bank, its Board of Directors, or any of its members countries. The authors are grateful to Shahid Kardar and Stuti Khemani for data collection and research assistance, and to Paul Glewwe, Hanan Jacoby, Elizabeth King, Lant Pritchett, and Guilherme Sedlacek for numerous helpful conversations on this study. Donna Otta prepared the manuscript. The data used in this article can be obtained beginning November 2001 through October 2004 from Harold Alderman.
© 2002 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
US ISSN 0022-166X