A better vision for development: Eyeglasses and academic performance in rural primary schools in China
A better vision for development: Eyeglasses and academic performance in rural primary schools in China
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DOI：
10.1016/j.jdeveco.2016.05.007
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发表时间：
2016-09-01
影响因子：
5
通讯作者：
Zhao, Meng
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Glewwe, Paul;Park, Albert;Zhao, Meng
发展中国家约有10%的小学生视力较差，但戴眼镜的人却很少。几乎没有研究考察视力不佳对学校表现的影响，并且简单的 OLS 估计可能存在偏差，因为更努力的学习可能会对一个人的视力产生不利影响。本文介绍了中国西部一项为农村小学生提供免费眼镜的随机试验的结果。我们的首选估计（排除了对照乡镇学生被错误配戴眼镜的乡镇对）表明，戴眼镜一学年使视力不佳学生的平均考试成绩增加了 0.16 至 0.22 个标准差，相当于额外增加了 0.3 至 0.5 年的受教育年限。这些估计是进行干预的两个县的平均值。我们还发现，对于表现不佳的学生来说，获益更大。一项简单的成本效益分析表明，佩戴眼镜的经济回报非常高，这引发了一个问题：为什么大多数家庭不进行此类投资。我们发现，女孩更有可能拒绝免费配镜，而父母对视力问题的缺乏认识、母亲的教育程度和经济因素（人均支出和价格）在没有干预的情况下显着影响孩子是否戴眼镜。 (C) 2016 年由 Elsevier B.V. 出版
About 10% of primary school students in developing countries have poor vision, but very few of them wear glasses. Almost no research examines the impact of poor vision on school performance, and simple OLS estimates could be biased because studying harder may adversely affects one's vision. This paper presents results from a randomized trial in Western China that offered free eyeglasses to rural primary school students. Our preferred estimates, which exclude township pairs for which students in the control township were mistakenly provided eyeglasses, indicate that wearing eyeglasses for one academic year increased the average test scores of students with poor vision by 0.16 to 0.22 standard deviations, equivalent to 0.3 to 0.5 additional years of schooling. These estimates are averages across the two counties where the intervention was conducted. We also find that the benefits are greater for under-performing students. A simple cost-benefit analysis suggests very high economic returns to wearing eyeglasses, raising the question of why such investments are not made by most families. We find that girls are more likely to refuse free eyeglasses, and that parental lack of awareness of vision problems, mothers' education, and economic factors (expenditures per capita and price) significantly affect whether children wear eyeglasses in the absence of the intervention. (C) 2016 Published by Elsevier B.V.