Parental Involvement Project: Group photo at the end of surveyors' training.
Activating Parental Managerial Capital: How Role Clarity Improves Education Outcomes
Households, like firms, differ widely in how effectively they transform inputs into outcomes. This paper argues that gaps in parental managerial capital—the ability to structure time, monitor effort, and guide behavior—help explain persistent educational inequality. I evaluate a randomized experiment in Benin in which less-educated parents received, on average, ten structured phone calls offering behavioral guidance on how to manage their child's time and effort on educational production. The intervention improved parental monitoring and time management, raising GPA by 0.11 standard deviations, reducing absenteeism by 11%, increasing grade completion by 6%, and lowering dropout—especially among girls and children of illiterate parents. The results highlight managerial capital as a critical but overlooked input in education, distinct from information or financial constraints.
Crisis-Induced Learning Losses and Recovery: Evidence from School Closures in Nigeria During COVID-19 (Joint with Adeniran, A., Okoye, D. and Wantchekon, L.) RISE Working Paper Series. 22/120.
Millions of children worldwide are affected by school closures due to conflicts, disease outbreaks, and natural disasters, leading to learning losses and precarious future path for students in developing countries. There is an urgent need to provide possible policy options to get children back on track. This paper provides evidence from Nigerian schools during the COVID-19 pandemic, suggesting that a full recovery from crisis-induced learning losses is possible. Using data from a random sample of schools, we find significant learning losses of about .6 standard deviations in English and Math. However, a program designed to slow down the curriculum and cover what was missed during school closures led to a full recovery of all learning losses within 2 months. Having an educated mother and access to learning at-home helps to minimize learning losses and speed up recovery. Students who participated in the program do not lag behind one year later and remain in school.
Other Ongoing Projects
Girls in STEM: Evidence from a Supplemental Math Lesson Program (with Leonard Wantchekon): Data collection complete
Improving School Financing: The Role of Digitizing Tuition Fees Payment (with Leora Klapper and Owen Ozier)—RCT & Data Collection Ongoing
Balancing the Scales: Gender Norms and Girls’ Educational Outcomes and Aspirations--Pilot Ongoing
A New Perspective on Child Marriage: Evidence from Benin