The Medium- Term Effects of Scholarships in a Low- Income
Country
Deon Filmer Norbert Schady
Filmer and Schady
A B S T R A C T
Despite progress in recent decades, a substantial fraction of children in developing countries attain little schooling, and many adults lack skills that
are valued in the labor market. We evaluate the medium- term effects of a program that provided scholarships for three years to poor children upon
graduation from elementary school in Cambodia, a low- income country. To do this we use a sharp regression discontinuity design. We show that
scholarships have substantial effects on school attainment. By the time children would have been in grade 11 had they remained in school, two
years after they stopped being eligible for scholarships, those who were offered scholarships have attained 0.6 more grades of completed schooling.
Nevertheless, we fi nd no evidence that scholarships had signifi cant effects on test scores, employment, earnings, or the probability of getting married or
having a child in adolescence.
I. Introduction
Despite progress in recent decades, a substantial fraction of children in developing countries attain little schooling, and many adults lack skills that are valued
Deon Filmer is a lead economist at the World Bank. Norbert Schady is the principal economic advisor for the Social Sector at the Inter- American Development Bank. They thank Felipe Barrera- Osorio, Luis Benveniste,
Pedro Carneiro, Stephanie Cellini, Richard Murnane, Jamele Rigolini, T. Paul Schultz, three anonymous referees and various seminar participants for very helpful comments, as well as Beng Simeth, Tsuyoshi Fukao
and the members of Scholarship Team of the Royal Government of Cambodia’s Ministry of Education for valu- able assistance in carrying out this work. Rodrigo Azuero and Haijing Huang provided outstanding research
assistance. This work benefi ted from funding from the World Bank’s Research Support Budget P094396; P095662; the Bank- Netherlands Partnership Program Trust Fund TF055023; the Gender Action Plan
Trust Fund TF094922; and a Hewlett Foundation Trust Fund TF096771. The fi ndings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of
the World Bank or the Inter- American Development Bank, their Executive Directors, or the governments they represent. The data used in this article can be obtained beginning January 2015 though December 2017 from
Deon Filmer at 1818 H Street NW Washington DC 20433, email dfilmerworldbank.org. [Submitted April 2012; accepted May 2013]
ISSN 0022- 166X E- ISSN 1548- 8004 © 2014 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
T H E J O U R N A L O F H U M A N R E S O U R C E S • 49 • 3
in the labor market. For this reason, policymakers and academics continue to search for programs and policies that can raise educational attainment and learning in poor
countries. A number of interventions have recently been shown to increase school enrollment
and attendance in some settings. These include merit- based scholarships Kremer, Miguel, and Thornton 2009, deworming for school- aged children Miguel and Kremer
2004, school construction Dufl o 2001, the provision of additional teachers Banerjee et al. 2007, vouchers for private schooling Angrist et al. 2002; Angrist, Bettinger, and
Kremer 2006, and conditional cash transfers—transfers that are made to poor house- holds, conditional on them keeping their children enrolled in school and attending
regularly. See the review by Fiszbein and Schady 2009. Nevertheless, the evidence base on interventions that can effectively increase school attainment in poor countries
is still thin. Of particular interest are evaluations that assess whether any effects that are observed in the short run are still apparent over a somewhat longer time horizon.
In this paper, we evaluate the medium- term effects of a program that provided scholarships to poor children upon graduation from elementary school in Cambodia,
a low- income country. To do this we use a sharp regression discontinuity design that exploits the fact that eligibility for scholarships was determined on the basis of a
composite measure that predicts the likelihood that a child would drop out of school. We present a variety of checks to support our identifi cation strategy.
Cambodia is one of the poorest countries in Asia. Most children enroll in primary school—the net primary school enrollment rate in Cambodia is 96 percent—but only
a minority continues on to secondary school. The net secondary school enrollment rate is 35 percent, a fi gure that is more closely comparable to countries in sub- Saharan
Africa like Mali 29 percent and Malawi 28 percent than to neighboring countries like Thailand 73 percent and Vietnam 69 percent. To address these low enrollment
rates, Cambodia has put in place a number of scholarship programs for children in lower secondary school grades 7–9.
In earlier work, we have analyzed the short- term effects of scholarships on school enrollment. One scholarship program, known as the Japanese Fund for Poverty Reduc-
tion JFPR program, increased school enrollment by 30 percentage points in grade 7 Filmer and Schady 2008. That scholarship program was eventually discontinued and
replaced by the program we analyze in this paper, known as the CESSP Scholarship Pro- gram CSP.
1
The CSP increased school enrollment rates in grade 8 by approximately 25 percentage points Filmer and Schady 2011. These effects are substantially larger than
those that have been reported for conditional cash transfer programs in Latin America, including the much- analyzed Mexican PROGRESA program—presumably, in part, be-
cause of the much lower baseline school enrollment rates in Cambodia than in Mexico. See Schultz 2004; Filmer and Schady 2011; Fiszbein and Schady 2009, pp. 128–29.
2
In this paper, we consider the effect of the CSP fi ve years after children started receiving scholarships. We show that scholarships have substantial effects on school
attainment. By the time children would have been in grade 11 had they continued in school, two years after they stopped being eligible for scholarships, those who were
1. CESSP stands for Cambodia Education Sector Support Program. 2. PROGRESA was renamed Oportunidades in 2001. In this paper we use the name PROGRESA for sim-
plicity.
offered scholarships have attained 0.6 more grades of completed schooling. Never- theless, we fi nd no evidence that scholarships had signifi cant effects on test scores,
employment, earnings, or the probability of getting married or having a child in ado- lescence. Because we focus on medium- term effects, our paper is closely related to a
recent paper that analyzes the medium- term effects of PROGRESA Behrman, Parker, and Todd 2011, and we discuss this in more detail in our conclusions.
The rest of the paper proceeds as follows. In Section II, we describe the CSP schol- arship program and the data. Section III discusses our identifi cation strategy. Section
IV presents our main results. We conclude in Section VI.
II. The Program and Data
