Das, Jishnu, Stefan Dercon, James Habyarimana, and Pramila Krishnan. 2007. “Teacher Shocks and Student Learning: Evidence from Zambia.” Journal of Human Resources 42(4): 820–862.
A large literature examines the link between shocks to households and the educational attainment of children. We use new panel data to estimate the impact of shocks to teachers on student learning in Mathematics and English. Using absenteeism in the 30 days preceding the survey as a measure of these shocks, we find no impact for the full sample, but a large impact for a subsample for which we can control for unobserved changes in teacher heterogeneity: A 5 percent increase in the teacher’s absence rate reduces learning by 4 to 8 percent of average gains over the year. Health problems—primarily teachers’ own illness and the illnesses of their family members—account for more than 60 percent of teacher absences. This is not surprising in a country struggling with an HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Jishnu Das is an economist in the Development Research Group (Public Services Team) of the World Bank. Stefan Dercon is a professor of development economics at Oxford University. James P. Habyarimana is an assistant professor in the Georgetown Public Policy Institute (GPPI) at Georgetown University. Pramila Krishnan is a university lecturer and Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge University. They thank two anonymous referees and seminar participants at Harvard University, Oxford University, University College London, CEMFI\ (Madrid), the Center for Global Development, NEUDC and Indiana (Purdue) for useful comments and suggestions. They also thank Rajeev Dehejia, Quy-Toan Do, and Renos Vakis for their detailed inputs. Funding for the survey was provided by DFID. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the view of the World Bank, its Executive Directors, or the countries they represent. The data used in this article can be obtained beginning May 2008 through April 2011 from James Habyarimana jph35@georgetown.edu.