Poverty and

Education
The link between
poverty and
educational failure
has concerned
many both in
government and
research for many
years. If poverty in
general does lead
to educational
failure, does this
mean that those children born into poverty are born into a vicious circle - the cycle of
poverty - that they cannot get out of? Born into poverty, poorly prepared if prepared at
all for pre-school, failure when compared to others at primary school, inability to access
the full curriculum at secondary school and failure when exams are taken. With such a
background, how can a child born into poverty break out of the cycle?
The Carolina Abecedarian Project was a controlled experiment that was conducted in
1972 in North Carolina, United States, by the Frank Porter Graham Child Development
Institute to study the potential benefits of early childhood education for poor children to
enhance school readiness. It has been found that in their earliest school years, poor
children lag behind others, suggesting the fact that they were ill-prepared for schooling.
The Abecedarian Project was inspired by the fact that few other early childhood
programs could provide a sufficiently well-controlled environment to determine the
effectiveness of early childhood training.
Children from disadvantaged backgrounds need to do more than just attend a good
school to boost their educational achievement, a report has claimed. It claimed that just
14% of the difference between an individual's performance was down to the quality of
the school. Former Schools Minister, Lord Adonis, said that one of the Labour
governments (1997 to 2010) main priorities while they were in government was helping
children from disadvantaged backgrounds. He suggested that one of the former
governments achievements was the provision of more activities outside of school which

helped children develop their confidence. With the current large cutback in government
spending, the fear is that these projects will be easy targets for cuts.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has studied the link between poverty and failure or
success at school. JRF found that children in poverty face greatly reduced educational
prospects and future life chances. They found that this is the conclusion not just of
social policy experts and government statisticians, but of young children themselves.
Research published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) shows that children are
aware of such outcomes from an early age and that their own stereotyping reinforces
these differences. This study summarises the messages from the first eight projects in
the JRFs Education and Poverty programme and looks at the experiences of children
from different backgrounds and their attitudes to education.
It concluded that low income is a strong predictor of low educational performance and
that children from different backgrounds have contrasting experiences at school. Less
advantaged children are more likely to feel a lack of control over their learning, and to
become reluctant recipients of the taught curriculum. This influences the development of
different attitudes to education at primary school that help shape their future.
Their findings were supported by research done by the BBC in September 2007. The
study found that poor children are as much as two years behind their peers in
educational achievement by age 14 and heading for a "downward spiral". Research for
the Campaign to End Child Poverty says children from poor homes are up to nine
months behind their peers before they even get to school.
For many children living in poverty stricken areas, private schools are not a likely option.
The average cost to attend a private school is 10,000, which for those living in poverty
is an impossible dream. The next option for them is good state schools, where they are
going to be at a disadvantage again because of the postcode lottery. This is a system
which favours those with perceived better postcodes and critics claim it allows schools
to best select their future intake so that the schools reputation is enhanced or
maintained.
UK Government set a target of 2020 to eradicate child poverty. The JRF believe that an
extra 4.2bn a year will have to be spent on tax credits if the government is to meet its
target of halving child poverty by 2015. In 2010, the JRF claimed that 2.3 million
children were living in poverty. The government had set a target for 2010 of 1.7 million
but this was set in 1999 well before the recession kicked in to the UKs economy. With
wholesale cuts in government spending in most areas, child poverty campaigners claim

that the figure will actually go up and that the 2020 deadline for child poverty eradication
will be missed by a long way.

Pantawid Pamilya is effective, say impact evaluation results

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Wednesday, 19 November 2014 06:13

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Dr. Orbeta discusses the Pantawid Pamilya 2014 Impact Evaluation results at Oracle Hotel and Residences, Quezon City last November 17,
2014.

Philippine Institute for Development Studies senior researcher Dr. Aniceto Orbeta presented in a public forum the results of
the 2014 impact evaluation of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (Philippine Conditional Cash Transfer Program). The
results confirm that the program is on track in achieving its objective of improving the health, nutrition, and education of
its beneficiaries.
The evaluation results show that Pantawid Pamilya is making progress as expected to convert public investments into
desired societal results. By extending aid from womb to school, the program keeps children healthy and in school, said
Orbeta. The World Bank-funded evaluation is based on a nationally representative sample and covers Set 1 to Set 4 Pantawid
Pamilya areas, which were introduced into the program between 2008 and 2011. The beneficiary households in the sample areas
have been exposed to the program for two to four years at the time of data collection from October to December 2013. The
sample includes 5,041 households from 30 municipalities in 26 provinces.
World Bank Country Director Motoo Konishi commended Pantawid Pamilya for the positive results. The development partner
recognizes the program as part of a broader strategy of the national government for sustained growth and job creation through
measures including investments in infrastructure, transparent governance, increased spending for social protection and improved
delivery of social services.

This latest evaluation tells us that the program is delivering results that clearly benefit the poor and the most vulnerable. The
World Bank, together with other development partners, supports Pantawid Pamilya because it is well-targeted and a direct way of
helping poor households meet their basic needs while improving their human capital, meaning that their children stay in
school and become healthier, said Konishi.
Improves access to healthcare services
The impact evaluation shows that Pantawid Pamilya mothers and children beneficiaries now have better access to maternal care
and basic health services.
More Pantawid Pamilya mothers delivered in health facilities in the past five years, with 7 in 10 live births among
Pantawid Pamilya mothers compared to 5.5 in 10 births among non-beneficiary mothers.
Furthermore, children beneficiaries have access to basic health services such as vitamin and mineral supplementation that are
vital to improving health outcomes. Eighty-six percent of Pantawid Pamilya children aged 6 months to 6 years old receive
vitamin A supplementation compared to 73% non-beneficiaries. Thirty-five percent children beneficiaries receive iron
supplementation compared to 23% non-beneficiaries.
Keeps children in school
High school children from Pantawid Pamilya households have higher gross enrolment rate of 95% compared to non-Pantawid
Pamilya children (89%). This only shows that the program keeps these children in school during the critical stage that they are
prone to dropping out in order to earn a living.
Pantawid Pamilya households also invest more on education. Results show that Pantawid Pamilya households spent PhP206
more per school-aged child per year compared to non-beneficiary households. Expenditures for uniform or clothing are higher for
Pantawid Pamilya children as well.
Positive outlook in life
Pantawid Pamilya seems to have improved parents perception of their situation and of their childrens future. It
encourages Pantawid Pamilya parents (87% compared to 81% for non-Pantawid Pamilya parents) to aspire for a better future of
their children and expect the kids to live a better life compared to theirs. This indicates that the beneficiaries understand that the
program will help their familys future welfare. The healthier outlook of the future may also prompt beneficiaries to take
necessary behavioral changes to achieve their aspirations.
The results of the impact evaluation only show that Pantawid Pamilya is delivering its commitment to keep children healthy and in
school, thus giving them a better chance to have a better life. More importantly, Pantawid Pamilya is giving the Filipino children
the opportunity to dream and be the future movers and leaders of the Filipino society who will enjoy and sustain inclusive
development, said Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Secretary Corazon Juliano-Soliman.
Pantawid Pamilya is implemented by DSWD in partnership with Department of Education, Department of Interior Local and

Government, and Department of Health.

The study also shows no evidence that the program encourages dependency or decreased work effort among adults in
beneficiary households. The proportion of working-age household members who are employed and continue to look for additional
work is higher for Pantawid Pamilya household members (16.9% compared to 11.3% for non-beneficiaries).
There is no evidence that Pantawid Pamilya encourages spending more on vice goods such as gambling, tobacco and alcohol
compared to households that are not beneficiaries.
As of November 5, the program has 4,440,824 household beneficiaries nationwide. Pantawid Pamilya has expanded its support
from households with children zero to 14 years old to households with children zero to 18 years old to help them finish high
school. ###

Education and Health

March 2007
Prepared from a paper by David M. Cutler, Harvard University and Adriana Lleras-Muney, Princeton
University.
Download printable version. (PDF)

Findings
Better educated people have lower morbidity rates from the most common acute and
chronic diseases, independent of basic demographic and labor market factors.
Life expectancy is increasing for everyone in the United States, yet differences
in life expectancy have grown over time between those with and without a college
education.
Health behaviors alone cannot account for health status differences between
those who are less educated and those who have more years of education.
The mechanisms by which education influences health are complex and are likely
to include (but are not limited to) interrelationships between demographic and
family background indicators, effects of poor health in childhood, greater
resources associated with higher levels of education, a learned appreciation for
the importance of good health behaviors, and ones social networks.

Background
A large and persistent association between education and health has been well-documented in many
countries and time periods and for a wide variety of health measures. In their paper, "Education and Health:
Evaluating Theories and Evidence," presented at the National Poverty Center conference "The Health Effects
of Non-Health Policy," David M. Cutler and Adriana Lleras-Muney review literature and conduct statistical

analyses on the relationship between education and health. They find a clear association between education
and health that cannot be fully explained by income, the labor market, or family background indicators. The
authors note that the relationship between health and education is a complicated one, with a range of
potential mechanisms shaping the connection between education and health.

What is the Relationship between Education and Health?

To test the relationship between education and health, Cutler and Lleras-Muney analyze data from the
National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), which includes a large number of health outcomes and behaviors.
They restrict their analysis to respondents who are at least twenty-five years or older, since most of these
individuals have completed their education. First, Cutler and Lleras- Muney examine individuals mortality
rates. By matching respondents with death certificates obtained through the National Death Index, they find
that individuals with higher levels of education are less likely to die within five years of the interview. An
additional four years of education lowers five year mortality by 1.8 percentage points (relative to a base of
11 percent).
They also find that better educated individuals are less likely to self-report a past diagnosis of an acute or
chronic disease, less likely to die from the most common acute and chronic diseases, and are less likely to
report anxiety or depression. The magnitude of the relationship between education and health varies across
conditions, but it is generally large. More education reduces the risk of heart disease by 2.2 percentage
points (relative to a base of 31 percent) and the risk of diabetes by 1.3 percentage points (relative to a base
of 7 percent). An additional four more years of schooling lowers the probability of reporting being in fair or
poor health by 6 percentage points (the mean is 12 percent), and reduces lost days of work to sickness by
2.3 days each year (relative to 5.2 on average). Figure 1 presents these results. Individuals with an
additional four years of education also report more positive health behaviors. As shown in Figure 2, they are
less likely to smoke (11 percentage points relative to a mean of 23 percent), to drink a lot (7 fewer days of
5 or more drinks in a year, among those who drink, from a base of 11), to be overweight or obese (5
percentage points lower obesity, compared to an average of 23 percent), or to use illegal drugs (0.6
percentage points less likely to use other illegal drugs, relative to an average of 5 percent). Despite the
difference in health behaviors between better educated and less educated individuals, health behaviors
alone can not explain all of the disparities in health outcomes between these two groups.

Differential Impact of Education: Level of Schooling, Age, Gender, Race, and Poverty
For many health outcomes, there are positive health consequences related to increased education. For
example, an almost linear negative relationship exists between mortality and years of schooling and
between self-reported fair/poor health status and years of schooling. For some health outcomes, such as
functional limitations and obesity, the impact of education appears to be even more positive once individuals
have obtained education beyond a high school degree. The effects of education on health vary by age, with
the education effect falling between the ages of 50 and 60. There are several possible reasons for this: 1)
less educated people are less likely to survive into older age, but those who do are relatively healthy and
hence less different from the more educated; 2) education may have become more important to health
outcomes in recent years; and/or 3) the relationship between education and health may be less significant
once adults retire.
The effect of education seems to be the same for both men and women across most outcomes, with a few
exceptions such as depression. Where the effect of education does differ by gender, it is unclear whether
these differences are caused by biological sex differences or differences in the behavior of men and women.
Similarly, there are few racial differences in the impact of education on health. For outcomes that do reveal
differences between Whites and Blacks, such as being in fair or poor health, Whites tend to experience more
positive health benefits from educational advancement, compared to Blacks with the same level of
education. Lastly, the authors find that additional years of education have a larger impact on health for
those not living in poverty compared to those who are poor.

Explaining the Relationship between Education and Health

Cutler and Lleras-Muney suggest three broad explanations for the association between health and education,
although they recognize that these do not represent an exhaustive list. The first is that poor health leads to
lower levels of schooling, since poor health in childhood is linked to poor health in adulthood. However, it is
unlikely that the correlation between child health and adult health fully explains the relationship between
adult health and completed education. Because few children in the U.S. fail to attend school solely because
of illness, one would anticipate the relationship between education and health to weaken over time.
However, this relationship has strengthened, suggesting that poor health alone cannot explain the
relationship between education and health.
The second potential explanation is that additional factors, such as family background or individual
differences, both increase schooling and improve health. Some researchers suggest that the relationship
between education and health can be explained by unobserved factors and skills, such as the ability to delay
gratification, that make better educated individuals healthier. Cutler and Lleras-Muney, however, assert that
evidence related to this explanation has been mixed at best. In their own models, adding family background
factors decreases the effect of education, although it does not explain all of the association between health
and education.
The third potential explanation for the link between education and health is that increased education directly
improves health. Quasi-natural experiments have demonstrated causal influences of various changes in
educational policies and of maternal education on health outcomes and also that increasing own education
improves ones own health. However these natural experiments have not considered the quality of
schooling. Furthermore, experiments tend to use study participants whose characteristics differ from those
of the rest of the population, making it difficult to generalize the findings beyond the research samples. The
authors conclude that one should apply caution when considering this account as the full explanation for the
relationship between health and education.
Cutler and Lleras-Muney also explore potential mechanisms that could affect the relationship between health
and education. One important mechanism is income, as greater financial resources may enable more access
to health care. The authors note, however, that while this may partially explain the relationship between
health and education, when they hold income constant, the impact of education on health does not
disappear.

Another possible mechanism is differential access to the health care system. Again, this cannot fully account
for the relationship between education and health because there are differences in health outcomes across
education groups in both the incidence of disease and in risk factors, such as smoking, which occur even
before the health system becomes a factor in shaping health. Cutler and Lleras-Muney also find that better
jobs, higher incomes, opportunities for health insurance, safer work environments and other job attributes
cannot fully explain the relationship.
The authors also evaluate group differences in valuing the future, access to health information, general
cognitive skills, individual characteristics, rank in society, and social networks. They conclude that each
factor alone insufficiently explains the relationship between education and health. For example, although
better educated people tend to be more informed about health issues, it is unlikely that group differences in
access to information can sufficiently explain the impact of education on health. Similarly, there is little
empirical evidence on the impact of cognitive skills on the relationship between education and health, nor is
there evidence that social networks or individual differences in psychological factors such as risk aversion
explain a sizeable proportion of the health differentials by education. Cutler and Lleras-Muney conclude that
more complex models are needed to explore potential mechanisms for the association between education
and health.

Policy Implications
There is a direct relationship between education and healthbetter educated individuals have more positive
health outcomes. This association remains substantial and significant even after controlling for job
characteristics, income, and family background. This suggests that educational policies have the potential to
substantially improve health. Cutler and Lleras-Muney suggest that policies that promote college attendance
would be particularly beneficial. They also suggest a role for improving the quality of schools.

In addition to the National Poverty Center, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation, and the Russell Sage Foundation provided support for this project and the conference.

About the authors

David Cutler is the Otto Eckstein Professor of Applied Economics and Dean for the Social Sciences, Harvard
University.
Adriana Lleras-Muney is an Assistant Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Woodrow Wilson
School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University.

The National Poverty Centers Policy Brief series summarizes key academic research findings, highlighting
implications for policy.
The NPC encourages the dissemination of this publication and grants full reproduction right to any party so
long as proper credit is granted the NPC. Sample citation: Title, National Poverty Center Policy Brief #x.
Major funding for the National Poverty Center is provided by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for
Planning and Evaluation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the
author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the National Poverty Center or any sponsoring agency.
National Poverty Center
735 S. State Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-3091
734-615-5312
npcinfo@umich.edu

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TOPICS: children, education, health care, Hispanic, latino, literacy, politics, poverty, poverty
level, preschool,research, Susana Martinez

Health care and education are two areas where policy makers can make strides to improve the overall
well-being for Latino children. (Photo/Getty Images )

Health care, education key to

combating rising poverty rates among
children, say experts
by Nina Terrero, @nina_terrero
1:59 pm on 06/24/2013

Poverty remains a high-priority issue for the country and continues to

impact Hispanicchildren, as the rates of poor children has continued to climb even as the
nations unemployment has declined, states a new report.
According to an annual report released Monday by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, 23
percent of American children lived in poverty in 2011, a 19 percent increase in poverty levels
since 2005. Latino children are disproportionately impacted by the increase of overall

poverty levels as well, with 34 percent of Hispanic children living at the poverty level; a 2
percent jump from 32 percent in 2010.
The increase in poverty levels within the span of just one year comes as the national
unemployment rate went down from 7.5 percent in 2011 from nearly 9 percent in 2010,
states the Kids Count survey. But 39 percent of Hispanic children lacked parental
employment, researchers found; a 7 percent increase over the national average of 32
percent.
And the recession has hit states with high Hispanic populations and their residents under
18 extremely hard as the survey shows that New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and California
are among the ten worst states for overall well-being of children.
RELATED: Education secretary says preschool is key for Latino succes
Experts say education and health care remain two areas where policy makers can combat
poverty rates among Latino children, as preschool enrollment, literacy, high school
graduation rates, health care access, drug abuse level and mortality rates are all tied to
overall well-being.
Lack of health care and education go hand in hand when it comes to the poverty level
among children, says Myriam Torres, PhD, professor and director of the Consortium for
LatinoImmigration Studies at the University of South Carolina. When it comes to health
care, our health care system is overwhelming for Americans not to mention for
immigrants. They may not know what type of care their baby is entitled to as a U.S. citizen
and the language barrier often impacts care or the lack thereof. Investment in care and
community health organizations to educate Latinos about care is something thats very
much needed.
Citing the fact that Hispanic children have the lowest number of low-birth weight babies (7
percent) of any other ethnic group and the closest to that of the national average (8.1
percent), Dr. Torres says that its clear that Latino children begin life healthier the key is
to improvehealth care and educational access afterwards.
Research shows that our babies are the better off than other ethnic groups, despite the fact
that our socioeconomic situation is in general, much worse, explains Dr. Torres. We need
to continue to create free, sliding scale health care and urgent care facilities where poorer
people can go for care, and not feel that they will be broke for life after a visit. Our
population, especially here in South Carolina, has seen the benefit of this type of system but
more facilities that meet the needs of the uninsured need to be created.
And when it comes to education, Latino government officials like New Mexico Gov. Susana
Martinez are taking action. The governor has advocated for doubled investment in pre-

kindergarten programs and is also calling for additional funds for state programs across
early literacy and high school graduation efforts.
Clearly, doing things the way theyve always been done hasnt worked for our kids,
Enrique Knell, a spokesman for the governor told NBC News. And reform efforts must
include ending the practice of setting our children up for failure by passing them on to the
next grade level when they cant read.
The well-being of children should be considered without political ties or affiliation, says Dr.
Torres. There are many needs and a lot of work to be done, she notes.
And I hope that health care practioners, politicians and educators can work together to
accomplish what needs to be done for our children.