ERF 27th Annual Conference
The Effect of Primary School Construction on Later Outcomes
No.
ERF27_19
Publisher
ERF
Date
May, 2021
Topic
H5. National Government Expenditures and Related Policies
I2. Education and Research Institutions
J2. Demand and Supply of Labor
Improving the later outcomes of children through increasing their school attainment is a key policy priority in developing countries; yet, whether increasing government spending can improve school attainment is still an issue of debate. In this paper, we investigate the effect of a massive primary school construction program which was launched as part of the 1997 schooling reform on high school completion and labor force participation rates in Turkey. With this program, Turkey increased the number of primary education classrooms approximately by 31 percent from 1998 to 2002. Using the 2011 Population and Housing Census, we employ an identification strategy based on provincial differences in the intensity of construction program and the variation in exposure across birth cohorts induced by the timing of the program. The estimates suggest that the construction program increased high school completion rates by 2.1-2.4 percentage points for men and by 2.3-2.5 percentage points for women. While the program had no significant effect on male labor force participation, it led to a 2.2-2.6 percentage-point rise in female labor force participation. These findings suggest that the program has been effective in reducing the gender gaps in later outcomes. The results suggest that increasing primary school availability helps reducing gender gaps in later outcomes in a developing country context.
Authors
Hakan Ercan
Associate Professor of Economics, Middle East Technical...
Authors
Ahmet Ozturk
Statistical, Economic, and Social Research and Training...
Research Fellows
Semih Tumen
Professor of Economics, TED University, Turkey