I am presenting at the Labour/Development Brown Bag today (14 October) at 12.30 in Savery Hall 302. The title of the paper is "Adult Literacy Programs In Ghana: An Evaluation" (joint with Niels-Hugo Blunch). This is very much work in progress and both the title and the content is likely to change, but that is after all what brown bags are for. I hope to have a working paper version of this paper ready by the end of the month. See below for the abstract.

This paper examines the effect of adult literacy program participation on household consumption in Ghana. We find that in most cases there is no significant effect on consumption from participation after allowing for self-selection into the program. For households where no adults have completed any formal education there is, however, a substantial positive and statistically significant effect on household consumption, pointing towards the potential importance of adult literacy programs for the parts of the population which have not participated in the formal education system. Possible explanations for why adult literacy program participation does not seem to significantly affect households where some formal education has been attained are explored, as well.