Inequality of Opportunity in Education : Accounting for the Contributions of Sibs, Schools And Sorting across East Africa
Inequalities in the opportunity to obtain a good education in low-income countries are widely understood to be related to household resources and schooling quality. Yet, to date, most researchers have investigated the contributions of these two fac...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2018
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/476691540477524842/Inequality-of-Opportunity-in-Education-Accounting-for-the-Contributions-of-Sibs-Schools-and-Sorting-across-East-Africa http://hdl.handle.net/10986/30642 |
| Summary: | Inequalities in the opportunity to
obtain a good education in low-income countries are widely
understood to be related to household resources and
schooling quality. Yet, to date, most researchers have
investigated the contributions of these two factors
separately. This paper considers them jointly, paying
special attention to their covariation, which indicates
whether schools exacerbate or compensate for existing
household-based inequalities. The paper develops a new
variance decomposition framework and applies it to data on
more than one million children in three low-income East
African countries. The empirical results show that although
household factors account for a significant share of total
test score variation, variation in school quality and
positive sorting between households and schools are,
together, no less important. The analysis also finds
evidence of substantial geographical heterogeneity in
schooling quality. The paper concludes that promoting equity
in education in East Africa requires policies that go beyond
raising average school quality and should attend to the
distribution of school quality as well as assortative
matching between households and schools. |
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