The Permanent Input Hypothesis : The Case of Textbooks and (No) Student Learning in Sierra Leone
A textbook provision program in Sierra Leone demonstrates how volatility in the flow of government-provided learning inputs to schools can induce storage of these inputs by school administrators to smooth future consumption. This process in turn le...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank Group, Washington, DC
2014
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2014/09/20173246/permanent-input-hypothesis-case-textbooks-no-student-learning-sierra-leone http://hdl.handle.net/10986/20339 |
| Summary: | A textbook provision program in Sierra
Leone demonstrates how volatility in the flow of
government-provided learning inputs to schools can induce
storage of these inputs by school administrators to smooth
future consumption. This process in turn leads to low
current utilization of inputs for student learning. A
randomized trial of a public program providing textbooks to
primary schools had modest positive impacts on teacher
behavior but no impacts on student performance. In many
treatment schools, student access to textbooks did not
actually increase because a large majority of the books were
stored rather than distributed to students. At the same
time, the propensity to save books was positively correlated
with uncertainty on the part of head teachers regarding
government transfers of books. The evidence suggests that
schools that have high uncertainty with respect to future
transfers are more likely to store a high proportion of
current transfers. These results show that reducing
uncertainty in school input flows could result in higher
current input use for student learning. For effective
program design, public policy programs must take
forward-looking behavior among intermediate actors into account. |
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