Document Type
Working Paper
Date of this Version
12-1-2019
Abstract
Inequalities in children’s learning are widely recognized to arise from variations in both household and school-related factors. While few studies have considered the role of sorting between schools and households, even fewer have quantified how much sorting contributes to educational inequalities in low- and middle-income countries. We fill this gap using data on over 1 million children from three East African countries. Applying a novel variance decomposition procedure, our results indicate that sorting of pupils across schools accounts for at least 8 percent of the total test-score variance, equivalent to half a year of schooling or more. This contribution tends to be largest for children from families at the ends of the socio-economic spectrum. Empirical simulations of steady-state educational inequalities reveal that policies to mitigate the consequences of sorting could substantially reduce inequalities in education.
Keywords
educational inequalities, socioeconomics, LMCIs, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda
Recommended Citation
Anand, Paul, Jere Behrman, Hai-Anh H. Dang, and Sam Jones. 2019. "Does Sorting Matter for Learning Inequality? Evidence from East Africa." University of Pennsylvania Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC), 2019-38. https://repository.upenn.edu/psc_publications/38.
Included in
African Studies Commons, Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research Commons, Educational Sociology Commons, Inequality and Stratification Commons
Date Posted: 21 January 2020