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Educational interventions in developing countries and the children left behind

10/27/2022

2 min

In this video, Professor Juan Munoz-Morales speaks about his research* which looks at the evaluation of learning in developing countries (educational interventions), and the importance of addressing the diversity of students to better design policies that promote their well-being and ability to learn.

Over the last decades, the number of children enrolled in schools in developing countries has increased remarkably. However, advances in learning have not followed this trend.

Educational interventions

Previous studies that analyze the lack of learning have generally focused on analyzing the average effects of teaching interventions. This approach assumes that students are similar and ignores that they are actually very different. Not all students learn and progress equally. The work by Professor Munoz Morales and his co-authors (from Copenhagen Business School and the Universities of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois) highlights that policies that are designed to improve ‘average’ learning skills can actually harm some individuals by making them learn less.

View the full video:

You can also read their full study here: “Some children left behind: Variation in the effects of an educational intervention, Journal of Econometrics, Julie Buhl-Wiggers, Jason T.Kerwin, Juan Muñoz-Morales, Jeffrey Smith, Rebecca Thornton)

Juan Munoz-Morales is an economist specialized in development and labor economics. His research focuses on understanding the link between education, labor markets, and public policy in developing countries.

His recent research addresses how information and subsidies affect the relationship between education policies, the acquisition of skills, and the success in the labor market of individuals with very different characteristics. He has a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and is a member of LEM (Lille Economie Management) and IFLAME (IÉSEG Research Center on Family, Labor and Migration Economics).