LOW-COST OUT-OFSCHOOL SUPPORT TO ADDRESS THE COVID-19 LEARNING LOSS OF CHILDREN IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Learning losses resulting from COVID-19 school closures are among the most severe global challenges to medium- and long-term recovery from COVID-19. School closures caused millions of children across the globe to significantly miss out on the academic learning they would have acquired if they had been in the classroom, with younger and more marginalized children likely facing the most significant losses. The United Nation (UN) estimated that the Covid-19 pandemic has already wiped out 20 years of educational gains. Across the world, according to a Unicef 2020 report, one in three children missed out on remote learning when COVID-19 forced schools to close.

In many developing countries online and home-schooling were not feasible due to a lack of internet access. Hence, for students with limited or no access to the internet, a low-cost and sustainable learning solution is needed to help them recover the learning loss. Research led by CDES have been conducting studies in three countries in South Asia – Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan to address the learning loss. When all schools in Bangladesh closed during the Covid-19 pandemic, in early 2020, we recruited volunteers from various universities as mentors, who engaged with children along with their parents (primarily mothers). The volunteer tutors provided weekly remote learning support and home-schooling advice to primary schoolage children and their mothers. Mentors were provided with brief training, guideline, and phone bills. There was no out-of-pocket cost for parents or mentors.

In related research, we examine a low-cost Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system that also delivered over-the-phone learning resources to rural students in Bangladesh. Participating students called a toll-free number to listen to the learning lessons and instructions together with their parents. We recorded a set of audio lessons and stored them on the server that could be accessed at any time by calling our programspecific phone number. This IVR approach has enabled parents to schedule their time for children’s home-schooling with greater ease. The advantage of this program over the tele-mentoring program is that: (i) children can access the IVR system on demand; (2) the program does not need to recruit and manage volunteer tutors; and (iii) lower monetary cost. Thus, it is relatively easy to scale up to reach more children.

After schools are open, we expand the work in Nepal and Pakistan and involve secondary school students to catch-up their learning loss using IVR. In addition, we are setting up Catch-up Camps or ‘Uthaner Pathshala’ for in-person interactive learning activities in a safe and accessible place in each village administered by paid volunteers called Shikkha Mitras (‘partner in education’). The projects are supporting families particularly mothers to foster more mother-child interactions: Helping families to cope with financial stress and to tackle the situation especially surrounding girl’s education, marriage, etc. that are directly linked to their worsening current economic conditions due to rising cost of living conditions.

We are working with the governments and the leading NGOs and EdTech firms in these countries to deliver and evaluate these interventions. These projects are funded by grants from Asian Development Bank and World Bank, and in collaboration with researchers from different universities in Europe and USA.

DEADWEIGHT LOSSES OR GAINS FROM INKIND TRANSFERS? EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE FROM INDIA

Supporting the poor is a central concern of the modern welfare state. There are essentially two ways to assist those who cannot afford to meet their basic needs. One is to provide basic goods to entitled poor households for free or at a subsidised price. The other is to support the poor household’s income directly with cash payments. Which one is the better way to support poor households? Orthodox economic theory has a clear favourite: in-kind transfers cause deadweight losses since they limit the recipients’ choices in a way that cash transfers of equivalent value do not.

This paper tests the existence of the deadweight loss of in-kind benefits and quantify its magnitude through an incentivized field experiment. Our experiment is located in the context of a mature food subsidy program in India, which has been in operation for decades. We conducted the experiment in select low-income urban neighbourhoods in the state of Maharashtra, where we offered respondents (mostly women) the choice between a free quantity of rice and varying amounts of cash transfers, to determine the amount of cash the respondents considered equivalent to the free rice. From this data we calculate the deadweight loss associated with the food subsidy.

Contrary to expectation, we find evidence of deadweight gain on average, though with a striking contrast between a deadweight loss among respondents from femaleheaded households and a deadweight gain among respondents from male-headed households. Our results highlight the role of gender differences in bargaining power in shaping the choice between cash or rice.