%0 Report
        %A Pugatch, Todd
%A Schroeder, Elizabeth
        %T Incentives for Teacher Relocation: Evidence from the Gambian Hardship Allowance
        %D 2013
        %8 2013 Nov
        %I Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        %C Bonn
        %7 IZA Discussion Paper
        %N 7723
        %U https://www.iza.org/index.php/publications/dp7723
        %X We evaluate the impact of the Gambian hardship allowance, which provides a salary premium of 30-40% to primary school teachers in remote locations, on the distribution and characteristics of teachers across schools. A geographic discontinuity in the policy's implementation and the presence of common pre-treatment trends between hardship and non-hardship schools provide sources of identifying variation. We find that the hardship allowance increased the share of qualified (certified) teachers by 10 percentage points. The policy also reduced the pupil-qualified teacher ratio by 27, or 61% of the mean, in recipient schools close to the distance threshold. Further analysis suggests that these gains were not merely the result of teachers switching from non-hardship to hardship schools. With similar policies in place in more than two dozen other developing countries, our study provides an important piece of evidence on their effectiveness.
        %K teacher labor markets
%K rural schools
%K Gambia
%K program evaluation
%K regression discontinuity