combatting corruption as a way to increase enrollment and student learning: evidence from a...

COMBATTING CORRUPTION AS A WAY TO INCREASE ENROLLMENT AND STUDENT LEARNING: EVIDENCE FROM A

NEWSPAPER CAMPAIGN IN UGANDA

RITVA REINIKKA

THE WORLD BANK

JAKOB SVENSSON

IIES, STOCKHOLM UNIVERSITY,DEV. RESEARCH GROUP, THE

WORLD BANK

what are the most effective ways to increase primary school enrollment and student learning?

• many would argue that the large literature on schooling in developing countries provide few reliable insights about what governments in developing countries should prioritize to raise educational attainment.

• this lack of knowledge does not reflect a lack of interest in the economic profession but that most of the contributions suffer from methodological shortcomings (Glewwe 2002, Duflo, Glennerster, Kremer 2004)

• recently, progress have been made in one important dimension: assessing the effects and costs of specific school inputs and programs through the use of quasi- or randomized experiments.

• similar to the conventional literature, the new literature studies schooling through a somewhat narrow (and benevolent social planner’s) lens, i.e. they disregard “political-economy” issues.

• while it is important to know what specific school programs and inputs that work, this information alone is not enough to guide government policy in developing countries.

understanding the service delivery chain

• when scaling-up a specific program that works in a controlled experiment run by a specific organization, it is crucial also to have an understanding of the whole social service delivery chain;

– institutional constrains that forms central government policy decisions

– incentive constraints that influences different layers of government agencies and officials that implement a given policy

– actions and incentives of the end producers (schools) and beneficiaries (students and parents).

• not taking into account the workings of the service delivery system may yield results that are very different from what a simple extrapolation of the estimates of the controlled experiment would suggest.

governance of social services

• as the total impact (when scaling up a program to the national level) depends on all the elements in the service delivery chain, and as social service delivery in developing countries is often plagued by inefficiencies and corruption, it follows that interventions that focus on improving governance in general and governance of social services in particular may be the most cost-effective way to increase school enrollment and student learning.

• as traditional approaches to improve governance has produced weak results in most developing countries, experimentation and evaluation of new tools to enhance accountability should be at the forefront of research into improving outcomes of social services.

an unusual policy experiment

• newspaper campaign in Uganda aimed at reducing capture of public funds by providing schools (parents) with information to monitor local officials’ handling of a large education grant program.

• a capitation grant to cover primary schools’ nonwage expenditures.

• program that appeared to work well, based on central government budget data. Funds were disbursed by the Ministry in charge on regular basis.

• but the situation on the ground was completely different from the official statistics. A public expenditure tracking survey (PETS) to gauge the extent to which public resources actually filtered down to the schools showed that in the mid-1990s, on average, schools received only around 20 percent of central government spending on the program (Reinikka and Svensson, 2004a). Most schools received nothing and schools in poor areas suffered most.

• the bulk of the grants was captured by local government officials (and politicians) in charge of disbursing the grant to the schools.

newspaper campaign

• government initiated a newspaper campaign in response to the problems identified in the first PETS.

• as an anticorruption program it differs from the standard package.

• traditionally, anticorruption programs target corruption in service delivery primarily through capacity building of the legal and financial institutions - judiciary, police, and financial auditors - in charge of enforcing accountability in the public sector.

• a top-down approach where some government agencies are assigned to monitor and control others.

• problem is that in many poor countries the legal and financial institutions are weak and among the most corrupt. More resources to these agencies may therefore not be the best solution.

• for these reasons, the government decided to take the route of citizen engagement and began to publish data on monthly transfers of capitation grants to districts in the national newspapers.

why would the newspaper campaign matter?

• Government:

– by using newspaper adds to inform the users of their entitlement, the government signaled that it attached a high weight on primary education.

– it also signaled strengthened oversight.

• Communities:

– by giving users access to information on the grant program, head teachers and parents could themselves monitor the local administration and voice complaints if funds did not reach the schools.

why would the newspaper campaign matter?

• Hirschman (1970) identifies a set of conditions under which voice is the preferred choice of action of dissatisfied customers:

– individuals must be able to compare outcomes of available choices (voice, exit, and loyalty).

– return of voice must be higher than the alternative - to exit or not act.

– the relative returns depend on both the availability of an exit option and the community’s ability to combine for collective action.

– the propensity to resort to the voice option depends also on the general readiness of a population to complain and the existence of institutions and mechanism that can communicate complaints cheaply and effectively.

outline

• the newspaper campaign and its effect on local capture (details in Reinikka and Svensson (2004b)

• effects of the newspaper campaign on enrollment and student learning (preliminary evidence from Reinikka and Svensson (2004c), Reinikka and Svensson (2005), and Björkman 2004)

• national program that prescribes a set amount to each student

• local (district) offices are used as distribution channels

– opportunity to capture the funds

• unlike other government programs, the capitation grant was a rare liquid money infusion into a local administrative and political system

– facilitates the capture of funds

• school-specific measure of capture sjt is grants received (by school j in year t) as a share of the grants disbursed by the central government to that school.

• data from central ministry (disbursments), the local government/districts, and schools (grant receipts).

capitation grant program

post campaign improvement

Mean Median St. dev. Obs All schools 1995 23.9 0 35.1 229 2001 81.8 82.3 24.6 217

estimating the impact of improved access to information

• in Reinikka and Svensson (2004b) we use two complementary approaches

– exploit the differences in access to newspapers across schools.

– measure exposure to the information campaign directly by testing head teachers’ knowledge of the grant program and then instruments for it by using distance to the nearest newspaper outlet as instrument.

valid instrument?

• must affect the school’s (HT and community) exposure to new information about the grant program but have no direct effect on its ability to claim funds from the district

• distance to a NP outlet captures the cost and ease of accessing a newspaper

– correlated with both the school’s and the community’s likelihood of being exposed.

• NP penetration is partly determined by logistic factors outside the school/community’s control

• explain the diff. in sj underestimate the effect if j and distancej are correlated.

• “standard instrument” [Card (1993), McClellan et al (1994)]

• exogenous and time invariant

valid instrument I: distance is correlated with newspaper access of HT

Specification (1) (2)

Dep. var. newspaper

Distance to nearest newspaper outlet

-0.100*** (.018)

-0.098*** (.020)

Income as control no yes

Schools 388 388

valid instrument II: distance is uncorrelated with test scores of local knowledge and ”general ability”

Spec. (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

Dep. var. Knowledge about grant

formula

Knowledge about timing

Info Knowledge about news

events

Knowledge about local

affairs

General political

knowledge

Distance to nearest NP outlet

-0.063*** (.021)

-0.040** (.020)

-0.103*** (.029)

-0.039*** (.010)

-0.001 (.004)

-0.013 (.010)

Range of scores

[0,1] [0,1] [0,1,2] [0,1] [0,1] [0,1]

Average test 0.65 0.24 0.89 0.65 0.75 0.57

Schools 388 388 388 388 388 388

valid instrument III: distance does not proxy for remotness and community effect seems important


Dep. var. info info


-0.080** (.038)

-0.096*** (.033)

Distance to district headquarters

Distance to nearest bank branch

Newspaper

-0.065 (.060)

0.021 (.060)

0.148** (.075)

Income as control yes yes

Schools 388 388

valid instrument IV: uncorrelated with changes in capture in the 5-year period prior to the NP campaign


Panel B: Control experiment (1991-1995)

1995 23.7*** 18.6** (5.4) (7.70) Distance to nearest newspaper outlet

0.64 (2.24)

0.62 (2.55)

Income as control no yes

Adj. R2 0.01 0.01

Schools 147 147

newspaper campaign and its effect on local capture


Regression 1st stage 2nd stage Dep. variable info s

Distance to nearest -0.103***

newspaper outlet (.029)

2001 2.30 (21.1)

Info 65.9*** (23.5) [23.6]

Income as control Yes Yes

Schools 388 199

a one standard deviation increase in info results in a 1.1 standard deviation increase in spending reaching the schools (i.e., 44.2 percentage points increase in funding reaching the school between 1995 and 2001)

effects of the newspaper campaign on enrollment and student learning

• use distance to the nearest newspaper outlet (distance) as instrument.

• instead of estimating the whole chain of events from distance through improved information to more funds, we first link distance to funding.

• this regression then forms the first stage of a two-stage least squares procedure of the impact of reduce capture on school enrollment.

sj = constant + 1 xj + 2distancej +j (FIRST STAGE)

studentsj = constant + β1 xj + β2 sj +j (SECOND STAGE)

effects of the NP campaign on enrollment

Specification (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

Dep. variable students s students students students

Period 95-01 95-01 95-01 95-01 91-95

Constant 450*** (20.3)

74.1*** (6.77)

29.7 (286)

574*** (49.3)

68.4** (33.6)


-5.74** (2.45)

-37.7** (17.9)

-4.7 (12.1)

Share of funding reaching school

7.55* (4.62)

Income (control) Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Schools 202 188 188 202 153

a one standard deviation increase in Δs results in a 0.66 standard deviation increase in school enrollment (i.e., 297 more students in school), but the IV estimate (reg. 3) is marginally insignificant (at 10 %) when reg 3. is estimated with robust standard errors.

effects of the NP campaign on student learning (PLE grade 7)

• replace students with test score

• utilize more data to estimate

test scoresjt = γ1xjt +γ2distancejσt + μj + δt + jt

effects of the NP campaign on student learning (PLE grade 7)

Specification (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

Dep. variable Test scores

Test scores

Test scores

Test scores

Test scores

Test scores

Years 95, 01 95, 01 91, 93, 94, 95, 01, 02

91, 93, 94, 95, 01, 02

91, 93, 94, 95, 01, 02

91, 93, 94, 95,

01

Method OLS IV OLS OLS OLS OLS

Distance*post-campaign periods -0.509 (.329)

-0.545*** (.176)

-0.545** (.257)

-0.604** (.258)

-0.612* (.351)

Share of funding reaching school 0.084* (.050)

Income Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Grade 7 students Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Students-teacher ratio Yes Students (log) Yes Time effects Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes School effects Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Schools 362 213 377 377 374 213 Observations 633 374 1829 1829 1811 822

complementary evidence based on district averages (Björkman 2004)

• Björkman’s study is based on data on all Grade 7 students in Uganda, combined with district specific data on newspaper circulation.

• by looking at district averages, she can to a large extent get around problems of sorting and selection.

• Björkman exploits the fact that exposure to information about the per-student capitation grant, and thus funding according to the results reported above, varied by district.

• she uses the variation in newspaper circulation per district as an instrument of exposure and a differences-in-differences approach

evidence based on district averages: results

• student enrollment increased significantly faster in districts with high newspaper circulation

• using a similar approach, she finds that the newspaper campaign had a large effect on student performance.

• on average, pupils in districts which were highly exposed to the per-capitation grant program scored 0.42 standard deviations (1.46 points) better in the Primary Leaving Exam than pupils in districts that were less exposed to the program.

conclusion

• in this paper we have argued that innovations in governance of social services may yield the highest return since social service delivery in developing countries is often plagued by inefficiencies and corruption.

• we illustrate this by using data from an unusual policy experiment: a newspaper campaign in Uganda.

• while preliminary, the evidence suggests that both enrollment and test scores increased significantly more in schools in areas with higher newspaper penetration, and thus in schools with more funds.

• since schools were free to spend their grants on whatever nonwage items they needed, be it textbooks, school meals, school uniforms, or flipcharts (or even to boost wages since funds generated by the schools themselves are fungible), these findings suggest that experimentation and evaluation of processes and institutions that improve voice and accountability, and thus indirectly enhance the learning environment in schools by ensuring that entitlements actually reach their beneficiaries, should be high on the policy and research agenda.