Cover: Policy Insight, Volume 2, Issue 4, August 2008
Read Online

Policy Insight, Volume 2, Issue 4, August 2008

The Cost-Effectiveness of Education Interventions in Poor Countries

by David K. Evans, Arkadipta Ghosh

Download Free Electronic Document

FormatFile SizeNotes
PDF file 0.2 MB

Use Adobe Acrobat Reader version 10 or higher for the best experience.

Poor countries need development programs that are both effective and cost-effective. To assess effectiveness, researchers are increasingly using randomized trials (or quasi-experimental methods that imitate randomized trials), which provide a clear picture of which outcomes are attributable to the program being evaluated. This Policy Insight discusses the benefits of drawing on the growing number of such studies to perform cost-effectiveness analyses. Cost-effectiveness analyses that compare different interventions or different classes of interventions can give policymakers much more information about what types of development programs deliver the most value. Evans and Ghosh present the results of a cost-effectiveness analysis of education interventions in low-income countries, using it to illustrate the key issues involved in this approach.

Research conducted by

This report is part of the RAND Corporation Corporate publication series. Corporate publications are program or department brochures, newsletters, pamphlets, and miscellaneous information about the RAND Corporation or RAND's business units. Some corporate publications are published in the AR series as Annual Reports or as Administrative Reports. Administrative Reports are often required by the client or sponsor and provide a status report on work resulting from a contract.

This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited; linking directly to this product page is encouraged. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial purposes. For information on reprint and reuse permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions.

The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.