Financial Constraints and Girls’ Secondary Education: Evidence from School Fee Elimination in The Gambia
研究了冈比亚大规模取消中学女生学费对入学人数、学生构成和学业成绩的影响，发现该项目使参加高中毕业考试的女孩数量增加55%，且学业成绩未下降，表明扩大入学机会不一定以牺牲学习为代价。
We assess the impact of large-scale fee elimination for secondary school girls in The Gambia on the quantity, composition, and achievement of students. The gradual rollout of the program across geographic regions provides identifying variation in the policy. The program increased the number of girls taking the high school exit exam by 55%. The share of older test takers increased in poorer districts, expanding access for students who began school late, repeated grades, or whose studies had been interrupted. Despite these changes in the quantity and composition of students, we find robustly positive point estimates of the program on test scores, with suggestive evidence of gains for several subgroups of both girls and boys. Absence of learning declines is notable in a setting where expanded access could strain limited resources and reduce school quality. Our findings suggest that financial constraints remain serious barriers to post-primary education, and that efforts to expand access to secondary education need not come at the expense of learning in low-income countries like The Gambia.