GDP Center Round-Up: Human Capital Initiative Spring 2022 Research Seminars

In Spring 2022, the Human Capital Initiative (HCI) hosted two research seminars with visiting scholars who presented new findings and received feedback from fellow experts on study design and methodology. The mission of HCI is to advance interdisciplinary research on the role of human capital in human development to inform policy solutions to global challenges including poverty, women’s empowerment and sustainable economic growth through investments in education and health. The topics of the two seminars fell within these themes, from the effects of misinformation on irregular migration from Nigeria, to the relationship between teacher flexibility and student outcomes in India.

Below see a summary of the highlights from HCI’s Spring 2022 research seminars:

Misinformation and Irregular Migration: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Nigeria

On Thursday, May 5, Alexandra Scacco, Senior Research Fellow and Vice Director of the Institutions and Political Inequality Unit at the Berlin Social Science Center, joined HCI for a virtual seminar attended by HCI’s Core Faculty Members and additional guests. Scacco is a political scientist whose work focuses on “how people make decisions under conditions fraught with extreme risk,” as she explained at the seminar.

Scacco began her presentation by summarizing the context behind her latest project, which began five years ago and looks at the factors influencing decisions to attempt irregular migration from West Africa to Europe. Irregular migration refers to migration that does not occur through legal or institutionalized processes, such as the route thousands of people fleeing West Africa take through northern Africa, Libya and then across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe.

The so-called “Mediterranean route” is fraught with danger, and images of boats packed shoulder-to-shoulder with people have become commonplace in international media. Violence and exploitation are common along the way, with frequent kidnapping, torture and abuse taking place at the hands of smugglers and detention centers. Even more migrants are trafficked into forced labor or sex work.

Given the horrible conditions facing potential migrants, scholars, practitioners and even the European Union have used information campaigns as a tool to help inform people and deter them from attempting irregular migration. However, there is to date little systematic evidence on the impacts of such campaigns on people’s perceptions of irregular migration and the benefits awaiting them if they choose to leave home.

To fill the gap in the literature, Scacco and colleagues posed the following questions: “What do potential migrants in a migration hotspot know and believe about the risks and potential benefits of the journey ex-ante?” and “Are potential migrants’ beliefs and decisions sensitive to information about risks?”

To answer the first question, they conducted a survey with 500 individuals from Benin City, the epicenter of irregular migration from Nigeria. The survey revealed potential migrants are surprisingly well-informed about features and benefits of their destination, many of whom want to leave Nigeria due to the lack of opportunities to earn an adequate, fair income. For example, many of the people surveyed were not far off in their estimates of the average life expectancy and monthly income in European countries. However, potential migrants were also relatively poorly informed about features of the migration journey itself and tend to be overly optimistic about their own chances of successfully migrating along the Mediterranean route.

To address the question on migrants’ sensitivity to information, Scacco and colleagues conducted a field experiment with 2,800 households in the Edo and Delta States of Nigeria. Members of the treatment group were given comprehensive information on the realities of irregular migration, including charts depicting how many people attempt the journey but fail to reach Europe, as well as video testimonials from former migrants.

The researchers found the information campaign had an immediate effect on individuals’ interest in attempting irregular migration: members of the treatment group were eight percentage points less likely to express interest in attempting the journey and perceived the journey to be riskier as compared to the control group. Furthermore, although the researchers found the impact of the campaign on beliefs and perceptions reduced over time, it persisted a year later.

In sum, Scacco and colleagues found that providing potential migrants with new, relevant information that pertains to their individual decision to migrate can educate them of the risks they face and also impact their propensity to undertake an extremely dangerous journey.

Teacher Flexibility and School Productivity: Evidence from a Remedial Education Program in India

On Thursday, May 12, Anne Fitzpatrick, Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts, Boston presented HCI’s first in-person seminar since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Fitzpatrick is a development economist whose work focuses on testing interventions aimed at improving health and education in developing countries.

Motivated to better understand low public sector productivity in developing states, Fitzpatrick and colleagues’ latest research project evaluates the effectiveness of different approaches to improving teacher and student outcomes in public secondary schools. One common approach employs uniformly high, rigorous standards for all students, while another allows teachers greater flexibility when delivering curricula based on local needs.

The researchers chose the Indian state of Odisha as the setting for their project. With a population of approximately 44 million, Odisha ranks below the national average in terms of literacy rates and school enrollment. Many students who are enrolled in school tend to lag grade level benchmarks: the average student in class nine is 4.5 grades behind in math and 4.1 grades behind in Odia, the official language of the state.

Previous research shows remedial education programs that divide students by learning level and adjust lesson plans to correspond with each level have successfully increased student learning in primary schools. However, there is a lack of evidence on whether remedial education programs are also effective in secondary schools, despite such programs existing. Schools in Odisha administer “Utkarsh,” (an Odia word meaning “excellence”), which is an intensive remedial program that aims to prepare class nine students to pass the national board exam administered at the end of class ten.

Fitzpatrick and colleagues posed the following questions to assess both the impact of remedial learning, as well as the impact of teacher flexibility on students within remedial programs: “What is the impact of a remedial bootcamp that replaces grade level curriculum for class nine students?” and “Does decentralized service delivery with additional flexibility for teachers improve student productivity?”

To answer these questions, they conducted a randomized controlled trial within 300 of Odisha’s public schools. The trial involved two treatments: the first treatment group received the standard Utkarsh “bootcamp” curriculum, with 69 days of planned lessons for each student ability level, teacher training and student handbooks.

The second treatment group received a “flexible” version of Utkarsh consisting of the same learning materials and training as the first group but offering teachers flexibility in terms of implementation. For 24 days, teachers were mandated to follow the standard Utkarsh curriculum, but were offered flexibility over course content for the remaining 45 days. The control group followed the standard curriculum of public schools in Odisha with no remedial component.

Through data collection involving baseline surveys, monitoring visits and endline surveys, the researchers found student test scores increased by 0.1 standard deviations after both treatments. The results indicate that while remedial education programs can improve student learning outcomes, offering teachers additional flexibility within these programs does not differentially affect productivity. Furthermore, only 20 percent of teachers offered flexibility opted into it; the vast majority preferred to follow standard Utkarsh lesson plans.

Ultimately, the two variations of the remedial education treatment achieved similar results: both experienced high implementation quality and saw classrooms become more active and engaged. Additional flexibility for teachers was not widely used, but neither did it harm student learning as some education scholars fear. Through their work, Fitpatrick and colleagues were able to identify a positive impact from remedial education and little to no impact of decentralized service delivery within public secondary schools.

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