Press Release: Learning the Value of Education

Press Release from J-PAL LAC and USAID

The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) has been awarded a USD$1.2 million grant by the Development Innovation Ventures (DIV) program at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The grant will fund J-PAL’s three year policy pilot “Learning the Value of Education”, which provides families with information about the benefits associated with more education as well as guidance on how to manage to stay in school and what help is available in order to reach their educational goals. The main objective of the program is to develop a policy that is cost-effective, can easily be scaled up to the national level, and can potentially help diminish the high dropout rates among students in developing countries.

While the last decade has seen massive increases in school enrollment, 61 million primary school-aged children still remain out of school worldwide. In addition, dropout rates are particularly high during the transition to secondary school. The dropout rate during this transition averages 12 percent in Latin America, 41 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa, and 29 percent in South Asia.

While strategies such as conditional cash transfer programs have been successful at increasing enrollment, these programs require ongoing financial support to be effective, and can thus prove costly. Many governments still feel a need for cost-effective and easy to implement programs that will reduce dropout rates.

Evidence from past evaluations suggests schooling decisions are influenced by families’ perception of the benefits of returns to education. Research also shows families in many contexts underestimate how much higher earnings are among people with more education. A study in the Dominican Republic showed that 42 percent of boys did not expect any difference in income if they completed only primary or if they finish secondary schooling, and that those who expect higher returns are more likely to remain in school.

“Learning the Value of Education” (AVE-RD) is a three-year policy pilot that will implement and evaluate a scalable information campaign in the Dominican Republic. To successfully accomplish this, AVE-RD will run a policy pilot with Dominican implementing partners who are capable of bringing the program to scale if it is proven effective and cost-effective. This will be accomplished through a series of activities:

  • Partnership with a Dominican Ministry of Education, working closely with an implementing partner, the Instituto de Evaluación de la Calidad Educativa (IDEICE).
  • Implementation of an information and guidance campaign to children in the eighth grade at public schools in the Dominican Republic in two stages: a pilot and an evaluation at scale.
  • Monitoring and evaluation of the processes conducted during the implementation. This will allow our team to demonstrate progress, allow adjustments, and contribute to future project expansion by demonstrating cost-effectiveness.

AVE-RD has introduced and shared the project´s activities to several Dominican stakeholders, including national government officials, the vice-presidency of the Dominican Republic, and local Dominican foundations who work on education.

About the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab

The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) was established in 2003 as a research center at the Economics Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Since then, it has grown into a global network of researchers who use randomized evaluations to answer critical policy questions in the fight against poverty. J-PAL’s mission is to reduce poverty by ensuring that policy is informed by scientific evidence. We do this through three main activities:

  • Conducting Rigorous Impact Evaluations: J-PAL researchers conduct randomized evaluations to test and improve the effectiveness of programs and policies aimed at reducing poverty.
  • Policy Outreach: J-PAL’s policy group analyzes and disseminates research results and builds partnerships with policymakers to ensure that policy is driven by evidence, and effective programs are scaled up.
  • Capacity Building: J-PAL equips practitioners with the expertise to carry out their own rigorous evaluations through training courses and joint research projects.

Principal Investigators of Learning the Value of Education  

  • James Berry
    Cornell University
  • Lucas Coffman
    Ohio State University
  • Ryan Cooper
    Científika
  • Christopher Neilson
    New York University
  • Daniel Morales Romero
    Data Analítica and Barna Business School

About Development Innovation Ventures

About Development Innovation Ventures: USAID’s Development Innovation Ventures (DIV) is an investment platform that finds, tests, and scales new solutions to development challenges around the world. Through a year-round open competition for ideas, DIV seeks ideas that demonstrate cost-effectiveness relative to traditional approaches that gather rigorous evidence of their intervention’s impacts, and that have the potential to scale through the public or private sector without long-term DIV support. For further information about DIV, please visit https://www.usaid.gov/div.