Measuring learning inequality in low-learning situations: Metrics and interpretation

• In Event: Mind the gap: understanding education inequality in developing countries

Proposal

This paper explores the issue of measurement of learning inequality. There is abundant evidence that learning levels are generally low in developing countries, but there is less knowledge about how learning achievement is distributed in within these contexts, and especially about how these distributions change as mean levels increase. We use child-level data on early literacy outcomes to quantitatively explore learning inequality using metrics borrowed from the economics and inequality literature. This paper deepens recent work in several ways. First, it extends the analysis to six developing countries, displaying which measures are computable and coherent across contexts. This information can add valuable information to program evaluation, without being redundant with other sources of information. Second, we show the large extent to which the disaggregation of inequality between- and within-schools and grades varies by context for foundational skills. Third, we present initial empirical evidence that, at least in the contexts of analysis of foundational interventions, improving average performance can reduce inequality as well, across all levels of socioeconomic status (SES). The data show that at baseline, the groups with the highest internal inequality tend to be the groups with lowest SES, as inequality among the poor themselves is higher than among their wealthier counterparts. Regardless of which SES groups benefit more in terms of a change in mean levels of reading, there is still a considerable reduction in inequality by baseline achievement as means increase. These results have policy implications in terms of targeting of interventions: much can be achieved in terms of simultaneously improving averages and increasing equality. This seems particularly true when the initial learning levels are as low as they currently are the developing world.

Authors

• Timothy Steven Slade, RTI International

• Luis Crouch, RTI International

• Daniel Rodriguez-Segura, University of Virginia