A teacher unlike me: Social distance, learning, and intergenerational mobility in developing countries

Naureen Karachiwalla

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Same-type teachers are extolled as a way to improve learning outcomes of socially disadvantaged students. This paper uses a relatively understudied social characteristic, caste, to study whether same-type teachers improve learning in a low-income country. Rich longitudinal data from Pakistan allows identification of causal effects using child fixed effects specifications. Low caste boys have significantly higher learning outcomes when taught by high caste teachers. Low caste boys have higher aspirations, and their parents spend significantly more time helping them with homework, when taught by these teachers. These results illustrate that, contrary to previous findings, in some settings different-type teachers may also promote educational attainment and aspirations, and thus intergenerational mobility.

Keywords: social distance; learning outcomes; complementarities; caste (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I24 I25 J15 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-09-19, Revised 2015-05-22
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/64439/1/MPRA_paper_64439.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:64439

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().