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Language use in education and primary schooling attainment: evidence from a natural experiment in Ethiopia

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  • Rajesh Ramachandran

    () (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona)

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    Abstract

    The extensive use of foreign languages in schooling might have an important role to play in the poor educational outcomes observed on the African continent. Exploiting the language policy change of 1994 in Ethiopia as a natural experiment, we estimate the effects of provision of mother tongue instruction on the largest ethnic group in the country. Our results suggest that provision of mother tongue education led to an increase of 0.75 to 1 year of primary schooling in the affected cohort. Moreover the entire increase in the years of schooling can be attributed to the intensive margin of education. The language policy change, conditional on enrolment, increased the percentage of people completing 6 years or more of schooling by 31%. Applying our findings to a set of African countries shows that even after accounting for the costs of provision, introduction of mother tongue instruction imply potentially large benefits and increases the percentage of population completing primary schooling by as much as 15% points. These finding have important policy implications at a time when surging enrolment rates and already stretched educational budgets in the African continent imply need for solutions which can increase the quality of education without requiring huge capital or infrastructural outlays.

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    File URL: http://www.ieb.ub.edu/phocadownload/documentostrabajo/doc2012-34.pdf
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    Bibliographic Info

    Paper provided by Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB) in its series Working Papers with number 2012/34.

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    Length: 49 pages
    Date of creation: 2012
    Date of revision:
    Handle: RePEc:ieb:wpaper:2012/6/doc2012-34

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    Related research

    Keywords: Education; language policy; difference in difference estimator; institutions;

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    1. World Bank, 2005. "Education in Ethiopia : Strengthening the Foundation for Sustainable Progress," World Bank Publications, The World Bank, number 7434.
    2. Chin, A. & Daysal, N. Meltem & Imberman, S.A., 2012. "Impact of Bilingual Education Programs on Limited English Proficient Students and Their Peers: Regression Discontinuity Evidence from Texas," Discussion Paper 2012-050, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    3. Edward P. Lazear, 1999. "Culture and Language," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(S6), pages S95-S126, December.
    4. Angrist, Joshua & Chin, Aimee & Godoy, Ricardo, 2008. "Is Spanish-only schooling responsible for the Puerto Rican language gap?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(1-2), pages 105-128, February.
    5. Psacharopoulos, George & Patrinos, Harry Anthony, 2002. "Returns to investment in education : a further update," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2881, The World Bank.
    6. Simon Appleton, 2000. "Education and health at the household level in sub-Saharan Africa," CID Working Papers 33, Center for International Development at Harvard University.
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