The cost of education investments should account for the labor market and economic realities that project beneficiaries will face: Despite achieving statistically significant positive impacts on enrollment, attendance, and learning outcomes, the projects produced low, and in the case of NECS & IMAGINE, economic rates of return. This was, in large part, due to the high cost of the investments and the low economic returns to education in Niger’s labor market. While the low returns to education contribute to the low economic rates of return of the project, they also provide important insight into the demand for education, as children and their families may see little advantage to school enrollment or pursuing an education. The projects were able to improve the perceptions of education in the treatment villages – parents in NECS & IMAGINE and NECS-only villages were 6.9 percentage points and 6.5 percentage points, respectively, more likely to want their child to attend secondary or higher schooling. However, further improvements in parental perceptions about education and further household investments in education may both be hampered by parents’ observations of low labor market returns to education. Working to find lower-cost solutions that provide access to quality education may be a promising area for future programming for the GoN and other donors working in Niger. Moreover, the demand for education and the economic and employment prospects of those targeted by the investment should be explicitly accounted for when designing education interventions in environments such as Niger.
Lesson Learned