Does sorting matter for learning inequality?Evidence from East Africa

Paul Anand, Jere Behrman, Hai-Anh Dang () and Sam Jones
Additional contact information
Paul Anand: Open University
Sam Jones: UNU-WIDER

PIER Working Paper Archive from Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania

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, eqyuivalent 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: inequality of educational opportunity; variance decomposition; sorting; East Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F63 I24 I25 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 48 pages
Date: 2019-12-31
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Working Paper: Does sorting matter for learning inequality?: Evidence from East Africa (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pen:papers:20-006

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