Quentin Wodon

World Bank

According to Church statistics, 6.9 million children were enrolled in Catholic primary and secondary schools in Europe. Enrolment has remained relatively stable over the last 40 years in comparison to other regions of the world, contributing to education pluralism. This may be in part because in many countries, Catholic and private schools benefit...

In September 2019, Pope Francis called for a broad alliance to renew our commitment to education to build a more fraternal humanity. To understand the Pope’s call for a Global Compact on Education, it is useful to explore his vision for education. For Pope Francis, education can no longer be reduced to what happens in the classroom. We need educati...

Pope Francis has made the protection of our common home a central theme of his Papacy. This may be nowhere more important than in Africa, a continent that is already today highly vulnerable to climate shocks due in part to high levels of water stress in many countries, food insecurity, and forced displacement, among others. In this paper, we use ho...

Pope Francis’ vision for a global compact on education, including the role that Catholic universities should play, is in sharp contrast to the vision that dominates the higher education sector: that of producing graduates for gainful employment. Can Catholic colleges and universities rise to the challenge? This article provides a partial answer to...

Service-learning can be a powerful tool to implement the commitments suggested by Pope Francis under the idea of a Global Compact on Education. The practice is considered high-impact for students. It can also help Catholic higher education institutions support their students’ search for meaning while strengthening their own Catholic identity in a w...

Particularly in low- and lower middle-income countries, petty corruption remains prevalent in service delivery, whether in schools, health centers, administrative services, or other institutions. In reference to Pope Francis’ call to say no to corruption in his recent trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo, this article measures the extent of cor...

Ten years ago, in March 2013, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected Pope, taking the papal name Francis. Pope Francis has had a profound impact—some would argue a transformational impact, on the Catholic Church and on the world. To celebrate ten years of his papacy, the idea came about to put together a special issue of The Review of Faith & I...

The term Koranic school is often used to describe schools that are not part of the formal education system and typically place a strong emphasis on memorising the Koran in Arabic, as well as on knowledge of Islamic religious education and practice. Using data from Niger as a case study, this paper provides data on trends in the share of individuals...

Africa is the region of the world where Catholic and other faith-based schools have the largest footprint. One in nine students in a primary school in Africa is enrolled in a Catholic school, and students from the region account for more than half of all students in Catholic primary schools globally. Through the role it plays in Africa, the Catholi...

The COVID-19 pandemic has renewed concerns about how shocks may affect religious and other private schools in low-income countries, especially when they do not benefit from state support. By reducing parental incomes, shocks – not only epidemics but also natural disasters and conflicts, reduce overall enrollment in school. But they may also lead to...

This article provides a comparative analysis of Christian faith-based schooling in five African countries, including data on the proportions of faith-based schools, financing models, and forms of organization vis-à-vis the state. The case studies represent different forms and models. In all of the countries, at least one in six schools is run by a...

Teachers who are satisfied with their job are more likely to teach well, which in turn should enable their students to better learn while in school. Sub-Saharan Africa is currently experiencing a learning crisis, with close to nine out of ten children not able to read and understand a simple text at age 10. This affects all types of schools and stu...

National student assessments from Uganda suggest low levels of proficiency for students in primary and secondary schools. This is confirmed by data for primary schools from the 2013 Service Delivery Indicators survey. The data are used in this article to conduct an assessment of factors affecting student performance. A unique feature of the data is...

Objectives To analyze the role of both demand- and supply-side factors affecting birth registrations in East and Southern Africa by combining information on children, mothers, and their household on the one hand and information on the areas where they live on the other hand. Study design The study used deidentified data from recent Demographic and...

In education systems that support pluralism, students or parents can choose the type of school or university they attend. Given heterogeneity in priorities for what should be taught, education pluralism has a value in itself. It may also boost schooling and learning. The fact that there is heterogeneity is clear, otherwise we would not have differe...

There is not a lot of support in the international community today for the role played by the private sector, including faith-based schools, towards achieving the fourth sustainable development goal (SDG), which calls for ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education. Yet, education pluralism is called for in the UN Universal Declaration of Hu...

Low income countries in sub-Saharan Africa are confronted with a major challenge in terms of expanding access to secondary education. This is also the case in Uganda. This article considers two questions. First, where should new secondary schools be built if the aim is to reduce geographic disparities in access? Second, have new schools, and in par...

This paper is the second in a set of two on the extent to which Catholic and other faith-based schools are serving the poor well. Catholic and other faith-based schools reach millions of children who live in poverty, yet this does not necessarily mean that they are serving these children well enough. The paper considers two separate issues. First,...

Despite progress made towards increasing birth registration rates over the last dozen years, almost one in two children may still not get registered at birth in Niger according to a recent nationally representative household survey. What can be done to improve birth registration rates? This paper relies on a simple approach to measure how solving v...

Despite the fact that faith-based schools serve tens of millions of students (the estimate for the Catholic Church is at 62 million students enrolled in K12 schools globally in 2016), the role of faith-based schools remains largely ignored in policy discussions. The articles and essays in this symposium aim to inform current debates on the role of...

Faith-based schools play an important role today in the provision of education globally. Are the schools likely to continue to play such a role in the future? If so, where is that role likely to be most prominent? This paper considers these questions on the basis of long-term demographic, religious, and school enrollment trends. The trends suggest...

This paper provides estimates of the contribution of faith-based schools to human capital wealth using recent World Bank data. Wealth is the assets base that enables nations to generate future income. Estimates suggest that human capital wealth accounts for two thirds of global wealth, a much larger proportion than natural capital and produced capi...

The Catholic Church estimates that nine million children were enrolled in K12 Catholic schools in Latin America and the Caribbean in 2016. How has the number of students in Catholic schools evolved over the last two decades? In which countries is enrollment larger, whether in absolute terms or in terms of market share? Are Catholic schools performi...

Child marriage has large negative effects on the girls who marry early and their children, as well as communities and societies as a whole. Ending child marriage is a target under the Sustainable Development Goals, but investments to delay the age at first marriage remain limited in countries where child marriage is widespread. As part of a broader...

After the governments of China and India, the Catholic Church is probably the third largest provider of K12 education in the world. How has growth in enrollment in K12 Catholic schools varied across countries over the last two decades? Which countries have accounted for most of the growth at the regional and global level? What has been the role of...

According to Church statistics, the Catholic Church has 35 million children enrolled in its primary schools globally, and 20 million children enrolled in its secondary schools. At both levels, enrollment has increased over time globally. While there are debates on whether Catholic schools perform better than public schools, they clearly generate sa...

Serving the poor is a prime component of the mission of Catholic and many other faith-based schools. Do the schools succeed in doing so? This paper and a companion paper focusing on learning aim to answer this question. In this paper, the focus is on schooling or enrolment in school. The paper considers first global and regional data on the number...

Substantial effort has been put into forming and strengthening national networks of non-state, non-profit health providers in lower- to middle-income contexts. Christian health associations (national umbrella networks of faith-inspired health providers) were first established in the 1950s, and are currently present in an estimated 23 of the 54 coun...

This article examines community-level factors that negatively impact girls’ educational attainment and often lead them to marry early in Niger. The focus is on rural areas where girls tend to have especially low levels of educational attainment, and are also more likely to marry as children (before the age of 18). Using both quantitative and qualit...

Within the context of women’s lack of empowerment, the issues of child marriage and low educational attainment for girls are prominent, especially in West and Central Africa. Using survey data for 21 of the 25 countries in West and Central Africa, this article analyzes trends over time in educational attainment for girls and child marriage. Over th...

The understanding of the relationship between human rights and extreme poverty at the United Nations owes much to Joseph Wresinski, the founder of the International Movement ATD Fourth World. While Wresinski was a Catholic priest, he deliberately created an inter-denominational organization and developed a unique spirituality rooted in a shared lif...

Ending child marriage and early childbirths would reduce total fertility rates and population growth especially in countries with a high incidence of child marriage, early childbirths, or both. Savings for public budgets could be large. This article relies on demographic projections and a UNESCO costing model for the provision of education by gover...

Public transfer programs have a dual objective of redistributing income and providing insurance when individual incomes are subject to variability. To our knowledge, the normative literature on marginal policy reform has not yet provided a method to account for individual’s exposure to risk in the evaluation of public transfer programs. Stochastic...

Child marriage has significant negative impacts, not only for girls, but also for a range of development outcomes. This study aimed to assess, in a more detailed way than done so far, the magnitude of the relationship between child marriage and total fertility in multiple countries representing diverse settings. Data from the most recent Demographi...

Female genital cutting (FGC) is a major issue at the interplay of faith and health in development. The practice is in part faith-inspired, and has clear negative health impacts. The prevalence of FGC remains especially high in Egypt. This article reflects on some of the factors that lead to the perpetuation of the practice by analysing data from th...

How vulnerable groups fare in society and how they are affected by public policy have long been topics of high interest among social economics researchers. This is why poverty and human development were chosen as the themes for the program of sessions organized by the Association for Social Economics at the 2017 annual meetings of the Allied Social...

Vulnerability to weather schocks, climate change and migration in the Middle East and North Africa Weather shocks and climate change are major concerns in the Middle East and North Africa, yet the empirical evidence on the impact of climate change and extreme weather events on households, including the decision to migrate, remains limited in the re...

Child marriage is defined as a marriage or union taking place before a boy or a girl reaches the age of 18. The practice affects mostly girls and remains widespread, especially in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Ending child marriage is a target under the Sustainable Development Goals. Yet despite a broadening consensus that the practice should...

Good health and quality education are essential for economic growth and poverty reduction. Unfortunately, the quality of the education and health services provided in low-income countries is often low. Improving access and quality of education and health are key policy goals for Uganda. This paper builds on the Service Delivery Indicator study by f...

Good health and quality education are essential for economic growth and poverty reduction. Unfortunately, the quality of the education and health services provided in low-income countries is often low. Improving access and quality of education and health are key policy goals for Uganda. This paper builds on the Service Delivery Indicator study by f...

Good health and quality education are essential for economic growth and poverty reduction. Unfortunately, the quality of the education and health services provided in low-income countries is often low. Improving access and quality of education and health are key policy goals for Uganda. This paper builds on the Service Delivery Indicator study by f...

Early childhood development programmes vary in coordination and quality, with inadequate and inequitable access, especially for children younger than 3 years. New estimates, based on proxy measures of stunting and poverty, indicate that 250 million children (43%) younger than 5 years in low-income and middle-income countries are at risk of not reac...

Access to quality early childhood development (ECD), care, and pre-primary education is essential for child development and is now recognized as a priority under the Sustainable Development Goals. Investments in ECD by major donors have been rising rapidly in recent years. This makes the task of understanding better what works to promote ECD, and w...

Early childhood is a critical period in a child’s development. Poor conditions early in life affect not only children’s physical growth, but also their brain development and capabilities, with lasting consequences in adulthood. A child’s family is the first and most important support system to ensure healthy growth and development. This also means...