Willingness to Pay for Primary Education in Rural Pakistan

Highly subsidised public schools are the principal provider of education in the rural areas of Pakistan. Steady growth of school age population over time coupled with stagnant public funding has put enormous pressure on this system. The alternative of cost recovery through user charges has its own critics. They argue that introduction of tuition fees would substantially reduce the already small representation of low-income households in primary schools due to high price elasticity of their demand for schooling. Moreover, the revenue-generating potential of this policy may also be limited due to same reason. The present study uses a discrete choice random utility model of household utility maximising behaviour to evaluate feasibility and consequences of introducing user fees in primary schools in rural Pakistan, particularly with reference to above criticisms. The demand function for school enrolment derived from this model allows us to test the hypothesis that price elasticity of demand for schooling varies with income. It also provides estimates of the parameters of the utility function needed for measuring parents’ willingness to pay for their childrens’ education if money generated from tuition fees is reinvested in education. The estimated demand function takes into account total price of education, including opportunity cost. Estimation results show that price elasticity of demand for school enrolment is higher for lower-income groups. Hence school enrolment of the poorest children would bear the main brunt of user fees policy. Children’s gender and age, father’s education, presence of T.V. in the household, and community variables like the presence of an elected district council member, electricity, and public transport in the village turn out to be significant influences on the probability of primary school enrolment. Willingness to pay for education is lower for poorer households and can generate revenues to cover only a fraction of the cost of running a school. Hence the need to search for other sources of financing primary education in rural Pakistan.Primary Education, Pakistan

Time Poverty, Work Status and Gender: The Case of Pakistan

The present study measures time poverty and its incidence across gender, occupational groups, industries, regions, and income levels using Time Use Survey (TUS) 2007, the first nationwide time use survey for Pakistan. In the entire TUS sample, the incidence of time poverty is 14 percent. Women are found to be more time poor than men whether employed or not. This is because of certain women-specific activities that they have to perform irrespective of their employment status. Working women are far more time poor than those not working.. Women accepting a job have to make a major trade-off between time poverty and monetary poverty. People working in professions and industries that generally require extended work hours and offer low wage rates are more time poor. This entails a situation of double jeopardy for workers who tend to be money and time poor at the same time. The close association of time poverty with low income found in this study corroborates this conclusion. Government can help reduce time poverty by enforcing minimum wage laws and mandatory ceiling on work hours in industries with high concentration of time poverty. Eradication of monetary poverty can also eliminate the need to work long hours at low wages just to survive. A fair distribution of responsibilities between men and women.is also needed. Keywords: Time Poverty, Gender Disparities, Time Use, SNA Activities, Time Use Survey, Pakista

Production of Cognitive and Life Skills in Public, Private, and NGO Schools in Pakistan.

The share of private and NGO schools in primary education has substantially increased over time, though the public sector is still a major player in this area. The present study analyses the factors determining the quality of education offered by the three types of schools and draws policy recommendations for improving primary education in Pakistan. The study compares learning achievement of Class 4 students enrolled in 50 public, private, and NGO schools located across six districts of Pakistan and in Azad Kashmir in terms of their scores in Mathematics, Urdu, and General Knowledge tests. The analysis shows that, practically, there is no gap between public and NGO schools in terms of the test scores of their students. However, a significant test score gap was found between the students enrolled in public and private schools. This gap was largely explained by family background and school-related variables, including teachers’ qualification and student/teacher ratio. However, the performance of private schools was not uniform across districts. In some districts public schools performed even better than private and NGO schools. The findings of this study highlight the need for improving the quality of education in public schools by recruiting more qualified teachers and improving overall supervision. Teacher training is the area where the public and private sectors can benefit by pooling their resources and expertise.

On an Empirical Definition of Money for Pakistan

In the realm of monetary economics, the question of the appropriate definition of money is both crucial and controversial. Various definitions of money offered by monetary economists differ widely. While narrowly defined money consists of currency and demand deposits only. other broader definitions of money include a host of other assets as well. The choice of the most appropriate monetary aggregate is an empirical issue and needs to be settled empirically. In the literature a number of methods are available for defining money empirically. To mention only two of them, Meltzer (1963) and Laidler (1966) consider that definition o f money the most appropriate which gives the most stable demand function for money while Chetty (1969), Moroney and Wilberatte (1976), Boughton (1981) and Husted and Rush (1984) infer their definition of money on the basis of the degree of substitutability between narrowly defined money and other financial assets. Although the two methods are closely linked, the latter has the advantage of providing a direct measure of the degree of substitutability between various financial assets and also allows for defining money as a sort of weighted average of these assets based on this substitutability rather than a simple-sum aggregation

Production of Cognitive and Life Skills in Public, Private, and NGO Schools in Pakistan

The share of private and NGO schools in primary education has substantially increased over time, though the public sector is still a major player in this area. The present study analyses the factors determining the quality of education offered by the three types of schools and draws policy recommendations for improving primary education in Pakistan. The study compares learning achievement of Class 4 students enrolled in 50 public, private, and NGO schools located across six districts of Pakistan and in Azad Kashmir in terms of their scores in Mathematics, Urdu, and General Knowledge tests. The analysis shows that, practically, there is no gap between public and NGO schools in terms of the test scores of their students. However, a significant test score gap was found between the students enrolled in public and private schools. This gap was largely explained by family background and school-related variables, including teachers’ qualification and student/teacher ratio. However, the performance of private schools was not uniform across districts. In some districts public schools performed even better than private and NGO schools. The findings of this study highlight the need for improving the quality of education in public schools by recruiting more qualified teachers and improving overall supervision. Teacher training is the area where the public and private sectors can benefit by pooling their resources and expertise

A Critical Assessment of Free Public Schooling in Pakistan

Pakistan appeared on the map of the earth on August 14, 1947 as the British left the Indian subcontinent. The World Bank (1992) classifies Pakistan as a low income country on the basis of its per capita GNP. It is the ninth most populous and perhaps one of the fastest growing nations of the world. Unfortunately, Pakistan has also been one of the most illiterate countries of the world. Statistics collected four years after independence show that 86 percent people at that time could not read or write in any language. Taking note of this disturbing situation, almost all the relevant government documents ranging from the reports of various commissions formed to reform education to policy documents like five year plans emphasise eradication of mass illiteracy and provision of universal primary education as an objective of public policy. Free education for all has been traditionally advocated as a policy which would sooner or later achieve these goals. This policy has also been considered desirable from the view point of equity and social justice. At the time of independence, almost all the schools in the rural areas were public schools which charged only nominal tuition. In the urban areas a few private schools usually run by religious or community organisations could also be found. In October 1972, all the private schools were nationalised and education up to tenth grade was made free. Opening of private schools was again allowed in 1979. With this began an era of expensive private schools, particularly in the urban areas, existing side by side with low quality free public schools.

Poverty, Gender, and Primary School Enrolment in Pakistan

Primary education is at the base of the pyramid of education, and is regarded as a fundamental human right today. In addition, it has several tangible social and economic effects. As an essential component of human capital, primary education plays an important role in the economic growth and development of a country.1 Its impact on several other socioeconomic variables has also been documented in the literature. To quote a few examples, Butt (1984) has found that five or more years of a farmer’s education lead to increased farm productivity, reduced use of farm labour, and increased use of yield augmenting inputs. Azhar (1988) also reports a significant relationship between the number of years of schooling and increase in farm output due to increased technical efficiency. Studies of the rates of returns to education attribute a positive value to the rate of returns to primary education.2 This means that by acquiring primary education one can increase one’s earnings. Every policy document prepared by the Government of Pakistan aims at attaining universal primary education. However, it is also true that each of these documents has advanced the date for achieving the target specified in the previous one. The net enrolment rates at the primary level show that we are still far from this target.

Optimal Design of Box Composting Plant; A Case Study Of Pakistan

In this research, a feasible design framework has been developed in order to design a box composting facility. Box composting technique is potentially a sustainable method to deal with solid waste management issues. Three different existing composting facilities in the different provinces of Pakistan have been studied to investigate the duration of composting under different weather conditions and therefore baseline durations for composting against the varying climate of different regions in Pakistan have been established. The data validated that the duration of the composting decreases with the increase in temperature. Moreover, a design framework that incorporates the weather conditions, as well as the density of waste, has been presented to calculate the sizes of composting and maturing boxes. A numerical design example has been successfully solved by assuming the data which proved the feasibility of the developed framework to design the compost facility as per any given requirements

Parental Effects on Primary School Enrolment under Different Types of Household Headship: Evidence from Pakistan

Previous studies in Pakistan have established the number of pupil, parents, household, and community characteristics as determinants of primary school enrolment. However, treatment of the role of the household power structure in these studies is limited to the inclusion of a single dummy variable for female headship. Present study estimates separate probit regressions for different types of headships, hence allowing for an analysis of the power structure of the household and its impact on other explanatory variables. In addition to confirming the findings of previous studies, this study concludes that mother‘s headship results in greater positive influence of her own education and the economic status of the household on child‘s primary school enrolment. Father‘s headship in this regard has only limited influence. JEL Classification: C25, J16, I21 Keywords: Probit Models, School Enrolment, Gender Issue