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The Impact of a One Laptop per Child Program on Learning: Evidence from Uruguay

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  • De Melo, Gioia

    (Banco de México)

  • Machado, Alina

    (IECON, Universidad de la República)

  • Miranda, Alfonso

    (CIDE, Mexico City)

Abstract

We present evidence on the impact on students' math and reading scores of one of the largest deployments of an OLPC program and the only one implemented at a national scale: Plan Ceibal in Uruguay. Unlike previous work in the field, we have unique data that allow us to know the exact date of laptop delivery for every student in the sample. This gives us the ability to use a continuous treatment, where days of exposure are used as a treatment intensity measure. We use a panel data framework including fixed effects at the individual level. Given that there is some variation in the date of laptop delivery across individuals within the same school, we can identify the effect of the program net of potential heterogeneity in the rate schools gain improvements on student's achievement over time in the absence of the OLPC program across the country (i.e. we allow each school to follow a different learning growth curve over time due to unobservable time-varying heterogeneity). We also run an alternative specification where we allow for different learning growth curves over time between schools located in Montevideo and the rest of Uruguay. Our results suggest that in the first two years of its implementation the program had no effects on math and reading scores. The zero effect could be explained by the fact that laptops in class are mainly used to search for information on the internet.

Suggested Citation

  • De Melo, Gioia & Machado, Alina & Miranda, Alfonso, 2014. "The Impact of a One Laptop per Child Program on Learning: Evidence from Uruguay," IZA Discussion Papers 8489, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
  • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8489
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    Cited by:

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    2. Shamrova, Daria & Lampe, Joana, 2020. "Understanding patterns of child material deprivation in five regions of the world: A children’s rights perspective," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    3. Joaquin Marandino & Phanindra V. Wunnava, 2017. "The Effect of Access to Information and Communication Technology on Household Labor Income: Evidence from One Laptop Per Child in Uruguay," Economies, MDPI, vol. 5(3), pages 1-10, September.
    4. van Cappelle, Frank & Chopra, Vidur & Ackers, Jim & Gochyyev, Perman, 2021. "An analysis of the reach and effectiveness of distance learning in India during school closures due to COVID-19," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    5. Denis Fougère & Ghazala Azmat & Alexis Lermite & Clémence Lobut, 2022. "L’impact du numérique sur les apprentissages des élèves : évaluation d’une politique d’équipement à grande échelle. Ensemble des résultats au cycle 4," Working Papers halshs-03915750, HAL.
    6. Hall, Caroline & Lundin, Martin & Sibbmark, Kristina, 2021. "A laptop for every child? The impact of technology on human capital formation," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    7. Hall, Caroline & Lundin, Martin & Sibbmark, Kristina, 2019. "A laptop for every child? The impact of ICT on educational outcomes," Working Paper Series 2019:26, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.
    8. Daniel Feliciano & Laura López-Torres & Daniel Santín, 2021. "One Laptop per Child? Using Production Frontiers for Evaluating the Escuela 2.0 Program in Spain," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 9(20), pages 1-17, October.
    9. Eric Bettinger & Robert Fairlie & Anastasia Kapuza & Elena Kardanova & Prashant Loyalka & Andrey Zakharov, 2023. "Diminishing Marginal Returns to Computer‐Assisted Learning," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(2), pages 552-570, March.
    10. Yanguas, Maria Lucia, 2020. "Technology and educational choices: Evidence from a one-laptop-per-child program," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    11. Fietz, Katharina & Lay, Jann, 2023. "Digitalisation and labour markets in developing countries," GIGA Working Papers 335, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies.

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    Keywords

    impact evaluation; education; technology;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • I28 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Government Policy

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