In Bangladesh gross and net enrolment rates are used to measure overage and underage enrolment in the education system. However, due to the limits of these methods in exploring the issue of age in grade, the paper uses the CREATE Community and School Survey (COMSS) data from Bangladesh. COMSS was a longitudinal survey of 6,696 households with…

Upon first examination, Rwanda does not seem an ideal place for business investment and development. It is a landlocked country, often described as the "land of a thousand hills," surrounded by neighbors at varying stages of socioeconomic progress and stagnation. Because of the underdeveloped transportation infrastructure and a lack of…

Demand for university education has increased due to the recent innovations of universal, free and compulsory education at the basic and senior secondary education level. Education has been expanding very rapidly at all levels in Nigeria. However, there are serious problems related to quality, equity, unavailable human and material resources and…

This report offers the first systematic analysis of out-of-school youth populations. In so doing, it estimates the youth bulge worldwide and measures key characteristics of out-of-school youth for sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. In addition, as examples of how existing data can be used for analysis at the national and subnational levels, the…

In this publication, the authors compare the salaries of primary (Grades 1 to 6 in most countries) and secondary school (usually Grades 7 to 12) teachers with the salaries of people in mathematics-oriented professions, such as engineering, scientific fields, and accounting. Their analysis centers on a number of developed and developing countries.…

The BRIGHT program was designed to improve the educational outcomes of children in Burkina Faso. It focused on girls in particular and was implemented in 132 rural villages throughout the 10 provinces of the country in which girls' enrollment rates were lowest. It consisted of constructing primary schools with three classrooms and implementing a…

World food production reached a record high in 1986, exceeding 1985's record by about 1 percent, despite declining food output in Latin America, the United States, Western Europe, and Oceania. World food production generally increased faster than population from 1977 to 1986. Production of agricultural commodities increased at an annual compound…

This report presents lessons from Tanzania's development experience of the past four decades, with emphasis on the period since the last report (1996), and assesses the imperatives for higher sustained growth and better livelihood for its citizens in the future. The background papers review and assess Tanzania's actual growth and poverty reduction…

Presents data from the annual Freedom in the World survey, which evaluates political rights and civil liberties worldwide. End-of-century results indicate that 38.9 percent of the world's population lives in free societies, 25.3 percent lives in partly free societies, and 35.8 percent lives in not free societies. Discusses regional patterns,…

Educational development in a country should reliably predict the level of wealth and its distribution. Undeveloped societies tend to have highly inegalitarian distribution functions. The development process accelerates this tendency by rewarding wealthy segments of the population that are in a position to invest in the growing economy. Finally, in…

Describes recent trends in the economic and regional development of Indonesia and examines the internal and external forces influencing the process. Shows how these forces account for the rise of a strong centralized state. Discusses Indonesia's current problems. Includes tables, maps, and graphs of economic investment figures, world trade, and…

A typology of Pacific countries is attempted based on economic systems and degree of socioeconomic development using various indicators (per capita income, literacy, life span). Dimensions of language are then grafted onto these grids and an attempt is made to qualitatively correlate socioeconomic development with various manifestations of…

Psacharopoulos has found a declining rate-of-return to education pattern across levels of per capita income, using international data. A reexamination of Psacharopoulos's cross-country data refutes his declining rate-of-return hypothesis and points to diversity of cross-country experience as a possibly significant factor in interpreting the data.…

In this paper we argue that the primary force behind the large drop in real exchange rates that occurs after large devaluations is the slow adjustment in the prices of nontradable goods and services. Our empirical analysis uses data from five large devaluation episodes: Argentina (2002), Brazil (1999), Korea (1997), Mexico (1994), and Thailand…

Since his inauguration in July 2001, Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo has proposed to take actions in the areas of macroeconomic stabilization; reopening of country's access to international financial markets; budget modernization and state decentralization; social policy; revamping of the armed forces, police, and internal security services;…