Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Over the last few decades, many developing countries have experienced substantial increases in school enrollment. Between 1999 and 2009, the number of children attending primary education has risen by 59 percent in sub-Saharan Africa, 28 percent in South and West Asia, and 17 percent in the Arab states (UNESCO, 2011). These large gains in enrollment, however, were not accompanied by comparable increases in educational attainment. Recent data from the UNESCO (2015) shows that one in six children in developing countries has not completed primary school by 2015. Overall, the current levels of educational attainment in developing countries resemble those in developed countries in the late 1960s (Barro & Lee, 2013).

To address this enrollment-attainment gap, policymakers in developing countries have adopted a wide range of policy interventions (P. W. Glewwe, Hanushek, Humpage, & Ravina, 2011; Orazem & King, 2007). Some of these interventions focus on the demand side for schooling such as conditional cash transfers and school vouchers (J. Angrist, Bettinger, & Kremer, 2006; Lagarde, Haines, & Palmer, 2009; Rawlings & Rubio, 2005), while others rely on supply-side policies such as school construction and teacher training (Duflo, 2001; P. Glewwe, 2002; P. W. Glewwe et al., 2011). A third group of policies includes extending compulsory education (Kirdar, Dayioglu, & Koç, 2014; Spohr, 2003; Tsai, Liu, Chou, & Thornton, 2009).

Although the evidence on both the demand side and supply side policies is extensive, little is known about the effects of extending compulsory schooling in developing economies. In this paper, I use a natural experiment from Egypt to investigate the effect of extending primary schooling on long-term educational attainment and labor market outcomes in addition to other non-pecuniary outcomes. Beginning in the school year 2004-05, the Egyptian government increased the number of primary school years from five to six years, moving from an 8-year compulsory education system to a 9-year system. This policy reform was mandatory, affecting all individuals who were born on or after October 1^st, 1992. Using a regression discontinuity design, I compare educational attainment and labor market outcomes of individuals born just before and just after that date. Results suggest that extending compulsory education has a large positive effect on educational attainment. Individuals who received an extra year in compulsory education have completed, on average, 0.3 to 0.8 more years of schooling than those who were not affected by the compulsory school reform. There is no evidence, however, that the school reform has improved individual basic literacy and cognitive skills or affected schooling beyond the primary education level. Furthermore, I find no differences in labor force participation or employment status between individuals who were affected by expanding compulsory education and those who were not.