Why is so Little Spent on Educating the Poor?

Poverty, Income distribution, Education, Development

Can donor coordination solve the aid proliferation problem ?

The paper augments Holmstrom’s (1982) team production model in the context of aid effectiveness. The analysis shows how donor proliferation leads to inefficient supply of aid in the recipient country because of the free-riding problem faced by the donors. The empirical findings support the theoretical prediction with regard to donor proliferation. However, this raises the question whether the current efforts in the international aid community with regard to donor coordination can in fact solve the aid proliferation problem.

Donor fragmentation

This chapter explains the incentives facing donors that lead them to fragment their foreign aid effortis over a large number of recipients, sectros, and projects. It summarizes cross-country evidence suggesting that fragmentation may reduce quality of the public administration in aid recipients, distort public expenditure allocations, and impair progress on public budgetary management reform efforts.foreign aid, public administration, collective action failures

Donor fragmentation and bureaucratic quality in aid recipients

This paper analyzes the impact of donor fragmentation on the quality of government bureaucracy in aid-recipient nations. A formal model of a donor's decision to hire government administrators to manage donor-funded projects predicts that the number of administrators hired declines as the donor's share of other projects in the country increases, and as the donor's"altruism"(concern for the success of other donors'projects) increases. These hypotheses are supported by cross-country empirical tests using an index of bureaucratic quality available for aid-recipient nations over the 1982-2001 period. Declines in bureaucratic quality are associated with higher donor fragmentation (reflecting the presence of many donors, each with a small share of aid), and with smaller shares of aid coming from multilateral agencies, a proxy for donor"altruism."Economic Adjustment and Lending,Decentralization,Health Economics&Finance,Development Economics&Aid Effectiveness,Public Health Promotion,Development Economics&Aid Effectiveness,Economic Adjustment and Lending,Health Economics&Finance,ICT Policy and Strategies,Health Monitoring&Evaluation

Damped-driven system of bouncing droplets leading to deterministic diffusive behavior

Damped-driven systems are ubiquitous in science, however the damping and driving mechanisms are often quite convoluted. This manuscript presents an experimental and theoretical investigation of a fluidic droplet on a vertically vibrating fluid bath as a damped-driven system. We study a fluidic droplet in an annular cavity with the fluid bath forced above the Faraday wave threshold. We model the droplet as a kinematic point particle in air and as inelastic collisions during impact with the bath. In both experiments and the model the droplet is observed to chaotically change velocity with a Gaussian distribution. Finally, the statistical distributions from experiments and theory are analyzed. Incredibly, this simple deterministic interaction of damping and driving of the droplet leads to more complex Brownian-like and Levy-like behavior.Comment: 26 pages, 10 figure

A community Based Child Drowning Prevention Program in Bangladesh: a model for low income countries

Background: Drowning is a global public health problem of children. Children of low- and middle-income countries are the most susceptible victims. Prevention measures implemented in high-income countries have effectively reduced drowning. However, in low- and middle-income countries, due to a severe lack of information, drowning has not been recognized as a child survival issue. Moreover, prevention efforts remain non-existent as there is no proven effective measure applicable for these countries, including Bangladesh. Objectives: The objectives of the research activities were to determine the current child drowning situation and risk-factors in rural areas of Bangladesh (Paper I); to understand the community perception of drowning problems and the possible solutions for designing a preventive programme in the rural area of Bangladesh (Paper II); to develop, pilot and assess initial community response to an intervention package in terms of acceptability, feasibility and sustainability (Paper III) and to evaluate the package for its effectiveness (Paper IV). Methods: A cross sectional survey and a case-control study were conducted to determine the magnitude and identify risk-factors of child drowning respectively (Paper I). Community perception on drowning prevention was explored by using a qualitative method (Paper II). Intervention measures were identified through workshops with the relevant stakeholders. Utilizing qualitative methods community acceptability, feasibility and sustainability of the intervention package were initially assessed (Paper III). A quasi-experimental design was used to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention package (Paper IV). Two sub-districts were selected each having a population of 200,000. One was allocated as an intervention area and the other as a comparison area. Quantitative data was collected through structured pre-tested questionnaires and the qualitative data was gathered through Focus Group Discussions (FDGs) and in-depth interviews. Results: The drowning rate of Bangladeshi rural children aged 1-4 years was found to be 156.4 per 100,000 (95% CI 138.5 - 176.6 per 100,000). The proportional mortality due to drowning in the children was about 28.0 percent. Natural water bodies were the most frequent places of drowning, and over 40 percent occurred in ponds. The child's sex, mother's age and literacy, family income and ownership of agricultural land by the families were identified as risk factors (Paper I). Community people wrongly perceive that children 5 - 10 years are at the greatest risk of drowning. Participants of the FGDs, parents, adolescents and community leaders, knew the common causes of drowning and were able to mention a few preventive measures. However, they do not act on this knowledge (Paper II). Increased supervision of children through the creation of drowning-safe homes and the establishment of community crèches, raising water safety awareness, and educating the community on first response skills were the three core aspects identified through workshops to include in the intervention package. Qualitative study revealed that these measures are accepted by the community, feasible and sustainable (Paper III). After three years of implementation of the intervention package the evaluation showed that 36 percent of households became drowning safe and through 100 community crèches 2,680 children aged 1-4 years were kept safe under direct supervision. Nearly all the population of the intervention area were reached through various behaviour change communication materials. In the intervention area fatal drowning rate declined from 120.8 to 53.7 per 100,000; however, in the comparison area the rate remained the same in the base-line and the end-line data (Paper IV). Conclusion: Drowning is one of the major survival issues among children aged 1-4 years in rural Bangladesh. The intervention model developed through these research activities was found to be effective in reducing child drowning. Improved supervision, creating a heightened water safety culture of the community and utilizing low cost locally available resources are the fundamental intervention strategies identified in reducing child drowning in rural Bangladesh. This model is developed in such a way that it could be applicable in similar low-income settings