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Achmad Tohari (), Christopher Parsons () and Anu Rammohan ()
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Achmad Tohari: University of Western Australia
Christopher Parsons: University of Western Australia
Anu Rammohan: University of Western Australia

No 14358, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Information campaigns aimed at empowering the poor often fall short of meeting their desired aims. We study literacy's role in determining their efficacy. First, exploiting an RD design, we show that receipt of information increased household rice receipts by 30 percentage points. Second, we show that approximately half of the effect is driven by household head literacy. Leveraging novel data on the locations and timings of school openings in the 1970s INPRES school building program, we document that household heads' literacy gained during childhood was pivotal for their households subsequently receiving their full entitlement of rice during adulthood.

Keywords: poverty; targeting; information; literacy; dynamic complementarity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D04 D73 I21 I28 I32 I38 J24 O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47 pages
Date: 2021-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-edu and nep-ure
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