Incentives for teacher relocation: Evidence from the Gambian hardship allowance

Todd Pugatch and Elizabeth Schroeder

Economics of Education Review, 2014, vol. 41, issue C, 120-136

Abstract: We evaluate the impact of the Gambian hardship allowance, which provides a salary premium of 30–40% to primary school teachers in remote locations, on the distribution and characteristics of teachers across schools. A geographic discontinuity in the policy's implementation and the presence of common pre-treatment trends between hardship and non-hardship schools provide sources of identifying variation. We find that the hardship allowance increased the share of qualified (certified) teachers by 10 percentage points. The policy also reduced the pupil–qualified teacher ratio by 27, or 61% of the mean, in recipient schools close to the distance threshold. Further analysis suggests that these gains were not merely the result of teachers switching from non-hardship to hardship schools. With similar policies in place in more than two dozen other developing countries, our study provides an important piece of evidence on their effectiveness.

Keywords: Teacher labor markets; Rural schools; Gambia; Program evaluation; Regression discontinuity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I25 I28 J38 J45 J61 O12 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

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Working Paper: Incentives for Teacher Relocation: Evidence from the Gambian Hardship Allowance (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:41:y:2014:i:c:p:120-136

DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2014.04.003

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