通过终点线的“大力推动”：来自乌干达学生综合奖学金的证据（英）

Produced by the Research Support TeamAbstractThe Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about developmentissues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry thenames of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely thoseof the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank andits affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.Policy Research Working Paper11165Secondary school completion in sub-Saharan Africa is thelowest in the world. Given the multiple constraints house-holds face, the scope of purely demand-side interventionsto narrow the completion gap may be large. This paperquantifies this scope by studying how jointly relaxing keydemand-side constraints affects learning, graduation, andthe labor market entry of talented and economically disad-vantaged students in Uganda. The study randomizes accessto a “big push” scholarship program covering fees, schoolThis paper is a product of the Development Impact Group, Development Economics. It is part of a larger effort by theWorld Bank to provide open access to its research and make a contribution to development policy discussions around theworld. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at http://www.worldbank.org/prwp. The authors maybe contacted at blerva@worldbank.org. A verified reproducibility package for this paper is available athttp://reproducibility.worldbank.org, clickherefor direct access. POLIWORTRANSPARENTANALYSIS placement, school inputs, and a cash transfer equivalentto 50 percent of the adult wage. The program raises testscores and pushes completion rates to high-income countrylevels; it halves fertility and increases the share of womenwho work while studying. Students’ families of origin alsobenefit by becoming wealthier and happier. Results showthat relaxing demand-side constraints benefits students anddoubles as an antipoverty intervention for their households.ESEARCHGPAPERS CYRKIN A “Big Push” Through the Finish Line:Evidence from a Composite Scholarship for Ugandan StudentsBenedetta Lerva†Denise Ferris‡Margherita FornasariJELCodes:D04,D12,D13,D14,I22,I25.Keywords:randomizedevaluation,scholarship,cashtransfers,schoolin-We thank the MasterCard foundation for financial support; staff of Brac, in particular Carrie Ellett,Munshi Sulaiman, and Francis Tabu for their collaborative efforts throughout the project; RaagaAkkineni provided excellent research assistance. All errors and omissions are the responsibility ofthe authors alone. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirelythose of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the World Bank and its affili-ated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments theyWorld Bank (Corresponding Author) blerva@worldbank.orgFreelance Consultant; deniseferris@me.comWorld Bank; mfornasari@worldbank.org *§puts.represent. I. IntroductionAbout one in four students completed secondary school in sub-Saharan Africa in 2023,despite high estimated labor market returns (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2024;Montenegro and Patrinos, 2014). At current trends, it will take more than a centuryto catch up to the school completion levels of middle-income countries,1tive implications for economic growth and poverty eradication.In a context wherepoor households face multiple constraints dampening their demand for secondary ed-ucation, keeping in school children who would otherwise enter the labor force mayrequire supporting both the students and their households. This extends the scope fordemand-side interventions to poverty alleviation, besides educational attainment.This paper aims to understand if an education-intensive multifaceted program target-ing secondary school students can preserve the socioeconomic impacts of multifacetedantipoverty programs while boosting human capital accumulation. We study the Mas-terCard Foundation Scholars Program,2from a disadvantaged background with a package of interventions whose main com-ponents are school inputs and fees, a monthly cash transfer worth about one monthof teenage labor, and guaranteed admission to a pre-selected high-quality school. Weleverage the randomized assignment of program applicants to a treatment group (get-ting the full intervention package) or a pure control group to provide evidence of theshort- and long-term (2- and 8-year) impacts of the Scholars program on the schoolingand labor outcomes of the beneficiaries and on the socioeconomic well-being of theirhouseholds.Our randomized experiment jointly relaxes three important demand-side constraintsto s