Education and Equal Opportunities among Liberian Children

This paper expands the analysis of equal opportunities by connecting traditional benefit incidence analysis of public spending with the human opportunity index, a distribution sensitive measure of access to public services. It also develops ex-ante micro-simulations to determine the cost of equalizi...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Cuesta, José, Abras, Ana
Format: Journal Article
Language:en_US
Published: Taylor and Francis 2013
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10986/16191
Description
Summary:This paper expands the analysis of equal opportunities by connecting traditional benefit incidence analysis of public spending with the human opportunity index, a distribution sensitive measure of access to public services. It also develops ex-ante micro-simulations to determine the cost of equalizing educational opportunities. This technique is applied to Liberia, a country devastated by civil war with serious educational enrollment gaps and policies highly dependent on international aid. Results from simulated increases in teachers’ salaries, elimination of fee and non-fee costs and targeted public educational spending on rural schools all point to very modest redistributive effects but distinctive patterns of winners and losers among Liberian children.