The High Return to Private Schooling in a Low-Income Country

Existing studies from the United States, Latin America, and Asia provide scant evidence that private schools dramatically improve academic performance relative to public schools. Using data from Kenya—a poor country with weak public institutions—we find a large effect of private schooling on test scores, equivalent to one full standard deviation. This finding is robust to endogenous sorting of more able pupils into private schools. The magnitude of the effect dwarfs the impact of any rigorously tested intervention to raise performance within public schools. Furthermore, nearly twothirds of private schools operate at lower cost than the median government school. www.cgdev.org Tessa Bold, Mwangi Kimenyi, Germano Mwabu, and Justin Sandefur The High Return to Private Schooling in a Low-Income Country Tessa Bold Mwangi Kimenyi Germano Mwabu Justin Sandefur The authors acknowledge the financial support of the International Growth Centre and the UK Department for International Development (DFID) as part of the iiG, a research program to study how to improve institutions for pro-poor growth in Africa and South-Asia. The views expressed here are not necessarily those of DFID. We have benefitted from comments from Gabriel Demombynes, Charles Kenny, Karega Mutahi, Lant Pritchett, Jakob Svensson, and participants at iiG events in Nairobi (Institute for Economic Affairs), Kampala (Economic and Policy Research Council), and Oxford (Centre for the Study of African Economies). CGD is grateful for contributions from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in support of this work. Tessa Bold et al. “The High Return to Private Schooling in a Low-Income Country.” CGD Working Paper 279. Washington, D.C.: Center for Global Development. http://www.cgdev.org/content/publications/detail/1425807 Center for Global Development 1800 Massachusetts Ave., NW Washington, DC 20036 202.416.4000 (f ) 202.416.4050 www.cgdev.org The Center for Global Development is an independent, nonprofit policy research organization dedicated to reducing global poverty and inequality and to making globalization work for the poor. Use and dissemination of this Working Paper is encouraged; however, reproduced copies may not be used for commercial purposes. Further usage is permitted under the terms of the Creative Commons License. The views expressed in CGD Working Papers are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the board of directors or funders of the Center for Global Development.