Nazmul Chaudhury

Missing in Action: Teacher and Health Worker Absence in Developing Countries

In this paper, we report results from surveys in which enumerators make unannounced visits to primary schools and health clinics in Bangladesh, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Peru and Uganda and recorded whether they found teachers and health workers in the facilities.

Conditional Cash Transfers and Female Schooling: The Impact of the Female School Stipend Program on Public School Enrollments in Punjab, Pakistan

Instead of mean-tested conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs, some countries have implemented gender-targeted CCTs to explicitly address intra-household disparities in human capital investments. This study focuses on addressing the direct impact of a female school stipend program in Punjab, Pakistan: Did the intervention increase female enrollment in public schools? To address this question, the authors draw on data from the provincial school censuses of 2003 and 2005. They estimate the net growth in female enrollments in grades 6-8 in stipend eligible schools. Impact evaluation analysis, including difference-and-difference (DD), triple differencing (DDD), and regression-discontinuity design (RDD) indicate a modest but statistically significant impact of the intervention. The preferred estimator derived from a combination of DDD and RDD empirical strategies suggests that the average program impact between 2003 and 2005 was an increase of six female students per school in terms of absolute change and an increase of 9 percent in female enrollment in terms of relative change. A triangulation effort is also undertaken using two rounds of a nationally representative household survey before and after the intervention. Even though the surveys are not representative at the subprovincial level, the results corroborate evidence of the impact using school census data.

Reverse Gender Gap in Schooling in Bangladesh: Insights from Urban and Rural Households

Abstract This paper documents a reverse gender gap in secondary schooling outcomes in Bangladesh drawing upon several rounds of nationally representative household survey data. In terms of enrolment status and years of schooling completed, boys are found to lag behind girls in the rural as well as in the urban area. Within the urban sample, the gender gap is widest in the non-metropolitan area. These findings are robust to extensive control for demand and supply-side determinants of schooling and remain unchanged even when we use a within household estimator. We consider one hypothesis, namely gender-differentiated response to a conditional cash transfer program to reconcile the findings of this reverse gender gap.

Holy alliances: public subsidies, Islamic high schools, and female schooling in Bangladesh

This paper documents the experience of incentive‐based reforms in the secondary Islamic/madrasa education sector in Bangladesh within the context of the broader debate over modernization of religious school systems in South Asia. Key features of the reform are changes of the curriculum and policy regarding admission of female students. In return to formal registration and curriculum modernization, madrasas receive financial aid from the government towards teacher salary. Using a cross‐sectional census data‐set (containing current and retrospective information) on formal secondary schools and madrasas, we first point out that a significant fraction of the existing post‐primary registered madrasas today comprises of ‘converts’; that is, formerly all‐male, unregistered religious schools that previously offered traditional, religious education. Furthermore, these madrasas have embraced female students in recent years following the introduction of yet another incentive scheme, namely a conditional cash transfer scheme for secondary girls. Drawing upon school enrolment data aggregated at the region level, we show that regions that had more (modernized) madrasas were more likely to achieve gender parity in secondary enrolment during 1999–2003, holding the number of secular secondary schools constant. This finding highlights the previously undocumented role played by religious schools in removing gender disparity in rural Bangladesh.

Tenure, Diversity, and Commitment: Community Participation for Urban Service Provision

What factors influence community participation in the delivery of urban services? In particular, does security of tenure enhance the probability of participation as it provides individuals with incentives to act collectively in pursuit of a common objective? In addition, are collective efforts less likely to succeed when there is a high degree of heterogeneity in culture or endowments among community members? We use household level survey data for Bangalore, India, to show that tenure security has a significant impact on the willingness of residents to participate even when neighbourhoods are diverse in terms of their cultural background and welfare status. Our findings suggest that participation is possible in heterogeneous communities when participation is a means to a common objective and not a goal in itself.

What Determines Religious School Choice? Theory and Evidence from Rural Bangladesh

This paper looks at the determinants of school selection in rural Bangladesh, focusing on the choice between registered Islamic and non-religious schools. We consider a two period framework where children are a source of old age transfers. The amount of old age transfers made by children as adults is influenced both by their schooling and by parental religiosity. Parents also derive utility from educating a proportion of their children in madrasahs in a way that reflects their own religious values. We investigate how household income, religious preferences, schooling costs, and school quality affect the proportion of children sent to each school type. Using a unique dataset on secondary school age children from rural Bangladesh, we find that madrasah enrolment falls as household income increases. At the same time, more religious households, and those that live further away from a non-religious school are more likely to send their children to madrasahs. However, in contrast to the theory, we find that Islamic school demand does not respond to the average quality of schools in the locality.

The Dissonance between Schooling and Learning: Evidence from Rural Bangladesh

Using a basic mathematics competence test based on the primary school curricular standard, we examine the extent to which years spent in school actually increases numeracy achievement in rural Bangladesh. Our sample includes 10–18-year-old children currently enrolled in school as well as those out of school. About half of the children failed to pass the written competence test, a finding that also holds for those having completed primary school. Even after holding constant a wide range of factors such as household income, parental characteristics, current enrollment status, child ability, and aggregate institutional indicators of school quality, there remains a statistically significant correlation between schooling attained and basic mathematics competence above and beyond primary school completion—but the estimated schooling-learning profile is relatively flat. The findings have wide implications for reformulating policies that tend to focus on quantitative expansion of education in developing countries, without concurrent improvements in learning.

Poisoning the Mind: Arsenic Contamination and Cognitive Achievement of Children

Bangladesh has experienced the largest mass poisoning of a population in history owing to contamination of groundwater with naturally occurring inorganic arsenic. Continuous drinking of such metal-contaminated water is highly cancerous; prolonged drinking of such water risks developing diseases in a span of just 5-10 years. Arsenicosis-intake of arsenic-contaminated drinking water-has implications for childrens cognitive and psychological development. This study examines the effect of arsenicosis at school and at home on cognitive achievement of children in rural Bangladesh using recent nationally representative school survey data on students. Information on arsenic poisoning of the primary source of drinking water-tube wells-is used to ascertain arsenic exposure. The findings show an unambiguously negative and statistically significant correlation between mathematics score and arsenicosis at home, net of exposure at school. Split-sample analysis reveals that the effect is only specific to boys; for girls, the effect is negative but insignificant. Similar correlations are found for cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes such as subjective well-being, that is, a self-reported measure of life satisfaction (also a direct proxy for health status) of students and their performance in primary-standard mathematics. These correlations remain robust to controlling for school-level exposure.

Peaceful Coexistence? The Role of Religious Schools and NGOs in the Growth of Female Secondary Schooling in Bangladesh

Abstract Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), a non-governmental organisation (NGO), runs a large number of non-formal primary schools in Bangladesh which target out-of-school children from poor families. These schools are well-known for their effectiveness in closing the gender gap in primary school enrolment. On the other hand, registered non-government secondary madrasas (or Islamic schools) today enrol one girl against every boy student. In this article, we document a positive spillover effect of BRAC schools on female secondary enrolment in registered madrasas. Drawing upon school enrolment data aggregated at the region level, we first show that regions that had more registered madrasas experienced greater secondary female enrolment growth during 1999–2003, holding the number of secular secondary schools constant. In this context we test the impact of BRAC-run primary schools on female enrolment in registered madrasas. We deal with the potential endogeneity of placement of BRAC schools using an instrumental variable approach. Controlling for factors such as local-level poverty, road access and distance from major cities, we show that regions with a greater presence of BRAC schools have higher female enrolment growth in secondary madrasas. The effect is much bigger when compared to that on secondary schools.

Madrasas and NGOs: complements or substitutes ? non-state providers and growth in female education in Bangladesh

There has been a proliferation of non-state providers of education services in the developing world. In Bangladesh, for instance, Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee runs more than 40,000 non-formal schools that cater to school-drop outs from poor families or operate in villages where theres little provision for formal schools. This paper presents a rationale for supporting these schools on the basis of their spillover effects on female enrollment in secondary (registered) madrasa schools (Islamic faith schools). Most madrasa high schools in Bangladesh are financed by the sate and include a modern curriculum alongside traditional religious subjects. Using an establishment-level dataset on student enrollment in secondary schools and madrasas, the authors demonstrate that the presence of madrasas is positively associated with secondary female enrollment growth. Such feminization of madrasas is therefore unique and merits careful analysis. The authors test the effects of the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee primary schools on growth in female enrollment in madrasas. The analysis deals with potential endoegeneity by using data on number of the number of school branches and female members in the sub-district. The findings show that madrasas that are located in regions with a greater number of Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee schools have higher growth in female enrollment. This relationship is further strengthened by the finding that there is, however, no effect of these schools on female enrollment growth in secular schools.