Age heaping based numeracy estimates in African regions, 1950–1999: New methodological advances and results

Sarah Ferber and Jörg Baten

Economic History of Developing Regions, 2025, vol. 40, issue 1, 15-48

Abstract: During the post-colonial period, enrolment and years of schooling have increased substantially in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, this has been accompanied by a decline in the overall quality of education. As a result, it is important to focus on indicators such as numeracy and literacy, capturing the quality of education, rather than the input of schooling alone, to better understand educational attainment. Moreover, these skills have been associated, for example, to higher productivity and health. Numeracy, in particular, has been linked to sustained development. Therefore, measuring and understanding its development is a crucial first step to improve educational quality. Combining data from censuses and household surveys, we estimate numeracy at the subnational level for Sub-Saharan Africa employing the ABCC Index. Additionally, we carefully evaluate the suitability of the index and our data to capture basic numeracy – deeming it to be robust. We find mostly stagnating numeracy for the birth cohorts between 1950 and 1990, although some countries increased (for example, Ghana) and others declined. Moreover, we observe strong regional differences, with Southern Africa performing best and Western Africa worst.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/20780389.2024.2435935

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