Skip to main content
Home
  • Data & Research
  • Publications
  • Findings & Impact
  • Search

  • Themes
  • Blog
  • About
  • Young Lives News & Events
  • People
  • Countries

Home+
Themes+
Poverty & Inequality+
Inequality
Migration and mobility
Poverty and shocks
Social protection
Well-being and aspirations
Health & Nutrition+
Early childhood development
Malnutrition and cognitive development
Stunting and catch-up growth
Water and Sanitation
Education+
Early education
Low-fee private schooling
Low-fee private schooling
School effectiveness
Adolescence, Youth and Gender+
Gender
Marriage and parenthood
Child protection+
Children's work
Early marriage and FGM
Violence
Skills & Work
Blog
About
Young Lives News & Events+
Events
Past events
Media coverage
Our Research Films
Galleries
People+
Young Lives Associates
International Advisory Board
Research Partners
Countries

You are here

  • Home
  • Home
  • Publications
  • The Role of Schooling in Skill Development: Evidence from Young Lives in Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam

Publications

  • The Role of Schooling in Skill Development: Evidence from Young Lives in Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam

Share

 
Tweet
Email

The Role of Schooling in Skill Development: Evidence from Young Lives in Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam

October, 2012
Caine RollestonZoe James
  • Education
Background Paper, UNESCO Education For All Monitoring Report 2012
PDF icon Rolleston_James_The role of schooling_GMR2012.pdf

Preview

The expansion of schooling in developing countries has improved educational access significantly in recent years, but raises questions about what is learned in school and how this relates to the development of productive skills of value in formal and informal labour markets. Young Lives has collected data since 2002 on two cohorts of children born in 1994-95 and 2000-01 across 80 sites in four developing countries. This paper employs these data to examine the development of general cognitive skills and of basic literacy and numeracy over the child's life course and school career from ages 8 to 15, linking skills development to the advantages afforded by household resources, early nutrition, caregiver literacy, and experience of schooling.

It finds that early enrolment in school benefits children in disadvantaged contexts, especially Ethiopia, and that while early advantage at the household is a key determinant of skill acquisition in all four countries, there is evidence that schooling can compensate for this to some extent, especially at the basic education level, so that disparities at age 12 are lower than at younger ages. However, inequalities in skill development appear to strengthen again during the later years of schooling along established lines of household disadvantage, when pressures to dropout, especially because of rising costs including opportunity costs of labour, begin to rise.

About

Our people
Our funders
Our research
Contact Young Lives

Newsletter signup

Where we work

  • Ethiopia
  • India
  • Peru
  • Vietnam

Our themes

  • Poverty & Inequality
  • Health & Nutrition
  • Education
  • Gender & Youth
  • Child Protection
  • Skills & Work

Oxford Department of  International Development (ODID)
University of Oxford,  Queen Elizabeth House
3 Mansfield Road, Oxford, OX1 3TB, UK

Copyright 2021 Young Lives
|Privacy policy|Accessibility Statement|Sitemap