❓Why do the Nordics & Dutch speak English so much better than the Germans, Italians & French? ➡️ New Working Paper: Out-of-School Learning: Subtitling vs. Dubbing and the Acquisition of Foreign-Language Skills w/ F. Baumeister & E. Hanushek www.nber.org/papers/w33984 A 🧵 1/12

New blog: @rglenner.bsky.social & I suggest 4 criteria for donors choosing between multilateral education funds (eg GPE/ECW/IDA/IFFED/UNICEF/UNESCO) 1. Cost-effective interventions 2. Foundational literacy & numeracy 3. Poor countries 4. Financial & policy leverage www.cgdev.org/blog/four-cr...

I’m happy to share our latest Data Must Speak report for #BurkinaFaso. We collaborated with the Ministry of #Education to analyze their admin education data and model the factors influencing school performance. Main results in a 🧵 @unicefinnocenti.bsky.social www.unicef.org/innocenti/re...

A 10 μg/m3 increase in daily PM2.5 air pollution causes a 5.7 percent increase in full-day student absences, a 13.1 percent increase in teacher absences, and a 28 percent increase in behavior referrals, from Sarah Chung, Claudia Persico, and Jing Liu https://www.nber.org/papers/w33549

"We might see a fall in ODA, by 2027, of at least 25% relative to 2023 levels. And that’s very much a best-case scenario." ☹️ devpolicy.org/burden-shedd...

I’m happy to share our latest Data Must Speak report for #BurkinaFaso. We collaborated with the Ministry of #Education to analyze their admin education data and model the factors influencing school performance. Main results in a 🧵 @unicefinnocenti.bsky.social www.unicef.org/innocenti/re...

If VAT is a tariff, si is sales tax....

Interesting new paper on unemployment of college graduates in Burundi. Using a field experiment, Ndayikeza shows that college graduates are more likely to find a high-skill job if they have low-skill job experience. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

PEPFAR is *currently providing* lifesaving HIV treatment for 20.6 million people, including 566,000 children, as of Sept. 30, 2024. That treatment is now in serious jeopardy. I'm sure people in the administration don't want half a million kids on their conscience. www.nytimes.com/2025/01/24/u...

New @cgdev.org policy paper: *MALARIA VACCINES* are a huge scientific breakthrough. But the world is dragging its feet on rolling them out. We examine why, and how to go faster. 🧵

Crazy footages of rebels liberating women and children from Assad’s worst prison. I’m so happy for Syrian people that they’re finally free!

The fall of the Bastille, 2024.

SAYDNAYA librateddddddddd Freedom shatters the doors of darkness. FREE ARMY freed the detainees from Saydnaya Prison. All my cousins were there. I can't wait to know if they are alive. Ya Allah, I don't know what to write. I can't describe my feelings.

I’m not a Syrian refugee anymore. I’m Syrian. Just Syrian.

It’s actually happening. The Assad regime is going to fall.

As expected, French government has fallen. Barnier is the first PM to be voted out since 1962. Despite all his efforts to please the extreme-right, Le Pen let him down. France still has no budget for 2025…

Here a starter pack for UNICEF people . please share and add suggestions go.bsky.app/GhcuBN3

Notre-Dame de Paris reopens 5 years after the fire.

Macron has supported the Chadian dictatorship for years to avoid losing this military base. France said nothing last year when Chadian security forces killed the leader of the opposition (Yaya Dillo). And now we’re kicked out anyway…

The algorithms of Bluesky's official feeds should be public and there should be a plain English explanation of what they do.

Super interesting podcast by @draliceevans.bsky.social who interviews @aspaglayan.bsky.social on her last book "Raised to obey" about the mass expansion of primary education in the world. 1/7 open.spotify.com/episode/1BsZ...

Does educational expansion promote social mobility? In my latest study on 40 countries, that just came out in the American Sociological Review, it looks like it does. Integrating decomposition techniques with a comparative framework, 1/n

The gaps in college completion by race and gender in the US are extraordinarily large. 77% of Asian women between 25 and 34 have a BA. (I.e. they've not just done "some college", but completed a degree.) Incredible figure. www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...

Blue sky over Marseille.

Thrilled to (finally) share my working paper on the electoral impact of French repatriates from Algeria. The Algerian War and the repatriation of over 1 million French Algerians (pieds-noirs) remain a sensitive and essential chapter for understanding French politics. shorturl.at/hh9Ro

The richest 1% are responsible for 14% of global CO2 emissions and the top 10 for 43%! From a new paper in Nature www.nature.com/articles/s41... ht @doctorvive.bsky.social

"We show that 31–67% and 51–91% of the planetary boundary breaching responsibility could be attributed to the global top 10% and top 20% of consumers, respectively." Any economic agenda, even the "abundance" agenda, must deal with this scientific finding, no? www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Tinder but for lead research: Tune into our online matchmaking event for researchers to hear from and talk to organizations working on lead exposure in the developing world. Today 11 am ET/4pm UK www.cgdev.org/event/resear...

The mismatch earnings penalty By Chiara Cavaglia, Lindsey Macmillan, Konstantina Maragkou, Richard Murphy and Gill Wyness Read more at: ow.ly/ItAS50U622J

How are LLMs changing qualitative research? Qualitative research is time-consuming and limited by the number of people it can talk to. But now, AI can conduct and analyze large-scale conversations. I'm looking for real-word examples. Bonus points if it's in education in developing countries.

Wasps can be heavy drinkers while bees can hardly tolerate alcohol. That explains a lot! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

How are LLMs changing qualitative research? Qualitative research is time-consuming and limited by the number of people it can talk to. But now, AI can conduct and analyze large-scale conversations. I'm looking for real-word examples. Bonus points if it's in education in developing countries.

So many new followers in the past few days! Let me do a quick intro: I’m a development economist working on education. Currently at Unicef where I work with ministries of educ to do some admin data analysis and positive deviance research.

What mythical creature is part lion and part ant? Which is part goat and part human? These and many more combinations are listed in this fun graphic. Source: buff.ly/3jh9cwW

2% response rate is the best pollsters get in the US! I don't understand the value of these polls. Using past election votes for reweighting helps because most people don't change their vote but can polls help understand swing voters' intentions? www.nytimes.com/article/time...

Impressive results of a gvt program in Morocco implementing 2 GEEAP "great buys" : structured pedagogy and targeted remediation. +0.9SD! That puts it in the top 1% in terms of program effectiveness. povertyactionlab.org/sites/defaul...

Est-ce que ChatGPT vous tutoie ou vouvoie? Il s’est mis à utiliser « tu » ces derniers temps et je n’aime pas cette familiarité.

Argentina’s poverty rate increasing rapidly. Looks like the Milei’s “economic miracle” promoted by the right is not so great for the poorest. chequeado.com/el-explicado... ht @justsand.bsky.social

Communist flags and McDonalds in Hanoi. A good summary of Vietnam economic policies.

Duolingo is strange sometimes.

Some qualitative data from surveys we're running in Chad and Madagascar show that some school directors pay community teachers with their own money! Governments expect poor communities to cover teacher salaries but a lot of communities are too poor for that.

Nothing to brag about but in a couple of years that might be an impressive number :)

Great paper using Hungarian data showing that within-school sorting based on socio-economic status harm low status students. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Small negative effects of Covid school closures found in Australia (0.02 standard deviations per 100 days of school closures). www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

What are the pro and cons of making kids wear school uniform? My prior is that it's probably not very effective at improving social mixing in schools but the French government is pushing it and I was wondering if there's some good evidence about it.

I'm going to Viet Nam in a month for work and I'm trying to catch up with contemporary Vietnamese culture. I watched Furie (martial arts/action movie) yesterday and I was surprised how female dominated it was: all the badass are women and men are secondary character. www.imdb.com/title/tt9412...

There's no correlation between changes in PISA maths score and school closure intensity. #PISA2022

After the legalization of same-sex marriage in the US, fewer men started training as Catholic priest.

I feel that most of the political discourse in rich countries is centered on electric cars when it comes to curbing CO2 emissions but it seems that what really matters at global level is electric bikes/scooters/mopeds. theconversation.com/the-worlds-2...

Best thing being a dad: you never feel silly looking like this in a middle of a park on a Saturday afternoon.