Does cost of schooling affect enrollment by the poor? Universal primary education in Uganda

The paper evaluates the impact of Uganda's program of "Universal Primary Education" which, starting front 1997, dispensed with fees for primary enrollment. We find that the program was associated with a dramatic increase in primary school attendance, that inequalities in attendance related to gender, income, and region, were substantially reduced and that school fees paid by parents decreased at the primary but not at the secondary level. At the same time the general decline in the quality of education suggests that, in order to lead to sustained improvements in attendance and to transform these into higher levels of human capital, the policy needs to be complemented by improvements in school quality and accessibility of secondary education. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.