James Allen IV

Double-booked: Effects of overlap between school and farming calendars on education and child labor

Across sub-Saharan Africa, countries with a greater percentage of overlapping days in their school and farming calendars also have lower primary school survival rates. In theory, greater overlap between the school and farming calendars should indeed reduce schooling investments, and farm-based child labor too, as it constrains the time allocation opportunity set for both productive activities. I causally identify such effects by leveraging a four-month shift to the school calendar in Malawi that exogenously changed the number of days that the school calendar overlapped with specific crop calendars, which differentially affected communities based on their pre-policy crop allotments. Using panel data for school-aged children, I find that a 10-day increase in school calendar overlap during peak farming periods significantly decreases school advancement by 0.34 grades (one lost grade for every three children) and the share of children engaged in peak-period household farming by 11 percentage points after four years. Secondary analyses reveal stronger negative schooling impacts for girls and poorer households driven by overlap with the labor-intensive planting period. A policy simulation illustrates that adapting the school calendar to minimize overlap with peak farming periods is a highly cost-effective educational intervention to increase school participation by better accommodating farm labor demand.

Correcting misperceptions about support for social distancing to combat COVID-19

Key findings from midline evaluation of Egypt’s forsa graduation program

Forsa is a pilot economic inclusion program implemented by the Ministry of Social Solidarity (MoSS) in Egypt. The goal of the program is to graduate beneficiaries of Takaful to economic self-reliance by enabling them to engage in wage employment or small-scale productive enterprises. The Forsa program began in 2023 after significant delays. Obstacles to implementation included the Covid-19 pandemic, Egypt’s economic crisis following the Ukraine-Russia war, and administrative challenges with procurement approvals.