IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/apc/wpaper/2017-104.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Effect of Teacher Bonuses on Learning Outcomes and the Distribution of Teacher Skill: Evidence from Rural Schools in Peru

Author

Listed:
  • Juan F. Castro

    (Universidad del Pacifico)

  • Bruno Esposito

    (Universidad del Pacifico)

Abstract

Teachers tend to avoid working in places with poor basic services, where transport costs are high and students show low performance. As a result, less advantaged students living in rural areas usually get paired with less qualified teachers. In many developing countries, teachers are offered monetary incentives to work in rural or remote schools. The literature, however, offers very little evidence about their effect on teacher qualifications. Moreover, this is the first study to produce causal evidence about the effect on these incentives on learning outcomes. This paper analyses the effect of unconditional monetary incentives on learning outcomes and the distribution of teacher skill in public rural schools in Peru. Teachers working in a rural school receive, on average, an additional 430 soles each month (around US$ 130 and approximately 30% of the starting salary). Schools are classified as rural based on the population of their community and their distance to the nearest province capital. We use a regression discontinuity design that exploits the exogenous shift in the amount of the bonus that occurs around the population and distance thresholds used to classify a school as rural. We find that the average bonus had a positive effect of around 0.16 standard deviations on reading comprehension and mathematics test scores obtained by second grade students in the 2014 and 2015 national evaluations. One of the mechanisms by which teacher bonuses can have a positive effect on learning is by making rural schools more attractive for talented teachers. We find evidence in favor of this channel. In fact, the bonus caused a shift of 0.38 standard deviations in the average score obtained by rural school teachers in the 2015 recruitment evaluation.

Suggested Citation

  • Juan F. Castro & Bruno Esposito, 2017. "The Effect of Teacher Bonuses on Learning Outcomes and the Distribution of Teacher Skill: Evidence from Rural Schools in Peru," Working Papers 104, Peruvian Economic Association.
  • Handle: RePEc:apc:wpaper:2017-104
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://perueconomics.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/WP-104-2.pdf
    File Function: Application/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Pugatch, Todd & Schroeder, Elizabeth, 2014. "Incentives for teacher relocation: Evidence from the Gambian hardship allowance," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 120-136.
    2. Raj Chetty & John N. Friedman & Nathaniel Hilger & Emmanuel Saez & Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach & Danny Yagan, 2011. "How Does Your Kindergarten Classroom Affect Your Earnings? Evidence from Project Star," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 126(4), pages 1593-1660.
    3. Paul Glewwe & Nauman Ilias & Michael Kremer, 2010. "Teacher Incentives," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(3), pages 205-227, July.
    4. Andrews,Donald W. K. & Stock,James H. (ed.), 2005. "Identification and Inference for Econometric Models," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521844413, October.
    5. Joppe de Ree & Karthik Muralidharan & Menno Pradhan & Halsey Rogers, 2015. "Double for Nothing? Experimental Evidence on the Impact of an Unconditional Teacher Salary Increase on Student Performance in Indonesia," NBER Working Papers 21806, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Raj Chetty & John N. Friedman & Jonah E. Rockoff, 2014. "Measuring the Impacts of Teachers I: Evaluating Bias in Teacher Value-Added Estimates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(9), pages 2593-2632, September.
    7. Jere R. Behrman & Susan W. Parker & Petra E. Todd & Kenneth I. Wolpin, 2015. "Aligning Learning Incentives of Students and Teachers: Results from a Social Experiment in Mexican High Schools," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 123(2), pages 325-364.
    8. Michael J. Podgursky & Matthew G. Springer, 2007. "Teacher performance pay: A review," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(4), pages 909-950.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lee Crawfurd & Todd Pugatch, 2020. "Teacher Labor Markets in Developing Countries," Working Papers 546, Center for Global Development.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Karthik Muralidharan & Abhijeet Singh & Alejandro J. Ganimian, 2019. "Disrupting Education? Experimental Evidence on Technology-Aided Instruction in India," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(4), pages 1426-1460, April.
    2. Isaac Mbiti & Mauricio Romero & Youdi Schipper, 2023. "Designing Effective Teacher Performance Pay Programs: Experimental Evidence from Tanzania," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 133(653), pages 1968-2000.
    3. M. Caridad Araujo & Pedro Carneiro & Yyannú Cruz-Aguayo & Norbert Schady, 2016. "Teacher Quality and Learning Outcomes in Kindergarten," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 131(3), pages 1415-1453.
    4. Samuel Berlinski & Norbert Schady, 2015. "Daycare Services: It’s All about Quality," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Samuel Berlinski & Norbert Schady (ed.), The Early Years, chapter 4, pages 91-119, Palgrave Macmillan.
    5. Alejandro J. Ganimian & Richard J. Murnane, 2014. "Improving Educational Outcomes in Developing Countries: Lessons from Rigorous Impact Evaluations," NBER Working Papers 20284, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. M. Caridad Araujo & Yyannu Cruz-Aguayo & Analia Jaimovich & Sharon Lynn Kagan, 2015. "Drawing Up an Institutional Architecture," IDB Publications (Book Chapters), in: Samuel Berlinski & Norbert Schady (ed.), The Early Years: Child Well-Being and the Role of Public Policy, edition 1, chapter 7, pages 179-202, Inter-American Development Bank.
    7. Terrier, Camille, 2020. "Boys lag behind: How teachers’ gender biases affect student achievement," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    8. Lisa Grazzini, 2016. "The Importance of the Quality of Education: Some Determinants and its Effects on Earning Returns and Economic Growth," ECONOMIA PUBBLICA, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2016(2), pages 43-82.
    9. Alex Bell & Raj Chetty & Xavier Jaravel & Neviana Petkova & John Van Reenen, 2019. "Who Becomes an Inventor in America? The Importance of Exposure to Innovation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 134(2), pages 647-713.
    10. Yang, Minseok & Lee, Ho Jun, 2022. "Do school resources reduce socioeconomic achievement gap? Evidence from PISA 2015," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    11. Balch, Ryan & Springer, Matthew G., 2015. "Performance pay, test scores, and student learning objectives," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 114-125.
    12. Stephen Machin & Sandra McNally & Martina Viarengo, 2018. "Changing How Literacy Is Taught: Evidence on Synthetic Phonics," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 10(2), pages 217-241, May.
    13. Singh, Prakarsh & Masters, William A., 2017. "Impact of caregiver incentives on child health: Evidence from an experiment with Anganwadi workers in India," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 219-231.
    14. Hanushek, Eric A. & Woessmann, Ludger, 2011. "Overview of the symposium on performance pay for teachers," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 391-393, June.
    15. Vegas, E & Ganimian, A. J., 2013. "Theory and Evidence on Teacher Policies in Developed and Developing Countries," Working Paper 104291, Harvard University OpenScholar.
    16. Lombardi, María, 2019. "Is the remedy worse than the disease? The impact of teacher remediation on teacher and student performance in Chile," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    17. Baum-Snow, Nathaniel & Ferreira, Fernando, 2015. "Causal Inference in Urban and Regional Economics," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 3-68, Elsevier.
    18. Vilsa E. Curto & Roland G. Fryer Jr., 2014. "The Potential of Urban Boarding Schools for the Poor: Evidence from SEED," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 32(1), pages 65-93.
    19. Nguyen, My, 2018. "The Relationship between Race-Congruent Students and Teachers: Does Racial Discrimination Exist?," MPRA Paper 90002, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Adam J. Kapor & Christopher A. Neilson & Seth D. Zimmerman, 2020. "Heterogeneous Beliefs and School Choice Mechanisms," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(5), pages 1274-1315, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Teacher incentives; rural schools; regression discontinuity;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • C26 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Instrumental Variables (IV) Estimation

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:apc:wpaper:2017-104. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Nelson Ramírez-Rondán (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/peruvea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.