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If the poor are to benefit from economic growth, then they need the skills that are in growing demand, and the capacity to raise their productivity as smallholder farmers and micro-entrepreneurs. Yet, the poor seldom receive a satisfactory education. Too little is spent on primary education—the category of education of most direct benefit to the poor—while on average public subsidies to secondary education are roughly three times as high as subsidies to primary education, and subsidies to tertiary education are thirty times as high. In consequence, the higher income deciles benefit disproportionately from public spending on education—the share of the richest income quintile (28%) is roughly double that of poorest income quintile (13%) across countries. Why do such inequalities in public spending prevail? We argue that their wealth enables the affluent to buy favourable policies from politicians. In contrast, the poor lack the resources for lobbying and they face more severe collective action problems. We find strong empirical evidence for this interest group model of politics (as opposed to the median voter model which predicts a more redistributive pattern of public spending). We find that income inequality—which is a proxy for the political bargaining power of the rich versus the poor—is significant in explaining cross-country variance in the ratio of public spending on primary education to tertiary education. Holding everything else constant, a one standard deviation increase in the Gini coefficient would reduce the ratio of primary-school spending to tertiary spending by 0.20 percentage point. We also find that conflict is significant in skewing public spending away from primary education, and that increased ethnic diversity tends to reduce the relative share of public spending on primary schooling (although this effect may be mitigated if the political system is democratic rather than authoritarian). Our results raise some troubling issues for policy makers and aid donors. In particular, more attention must be given to reducing income inequality in order to reduce political constraints on pro-poor public expenditure reform (and on the effective implementation of the current wave of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers). And reducing the prevalence of conflict would facilitate resource shifts from military spending to primary schooling, thereby lessening the need to introduce higher levels of cost recovery in the secondary and tertiary education sectors to facilitate higher investment in primary education. – poverty ; income distribution ; education ; development

Exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) has proven benefits for both mothers and infants; however, adolescent mothers have poor EBF practices globally. In Bangladesh, the practice of EBF among adolescent mothers remains unexplored. The aim of our study was to understand the EBF practices among adolescent mothers and their determinants in both the Health and Demographic Surveillance (HDSS) system areas of the International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b) service area (ISA) and government service area (GSA) in rural Matlab, Bangladesh. For the purpose of our study, we collected relevant information from the database of the Health and Demographic Surveillance System (HDSS) of icddr,b and performed analysis to understand the trends and identify the determinants of EBF and identify the determinants of EBF among adolescent mothers living in two areas between 2007 and 2015. In total, 2947 children born to adolescent mothers were included in our final analysis. We used the Kaplan–Meier and the Cox-proportional hazards models to determine the differences in EBF practices in the two areas. We noted a lower trends of EBF in the ISA compared to the GSA in bivariate analysis. However, after adjusting for confounding variables, EBF status was 15% lower in the GSA than the ISA (HR: 0.85, 95% CI: 0.72–0.99). The father's education was significantly different among the two populations. In both study areas, the coverage of EBF among adolescent mothers was lower than the national average (42% vs. 65%). Ensuring that adolescent mothers receive optimal care may improve EBF behavior.

Building on the pioneering work of Barro (1991) and Mauro (1995) to include the most recent years for which data are available (for Bangladesh in the 1990s), the authors investigate the relationships between corruption, and growth, and, between corruption and investment, both domestic and foreign, to see whether they have changed from earlier decades. Then they move away from Mauro's implicit assumption that the corruption index value for a relatively short period of time, can be used as a proxy for the long run, and further augment Mauro's model by including significant regional dummy variables, in an attempt to take account of various region-specific effects. The authors also analyze the sensitivity of corruption in the presence, and absence of various policy, geographic, and demographic variables that are widely used in empirical growth, and investment literature. The findings suggest that countries serious about improving governance, and reducing corruption, should redefine the role of government, overhaul the system of incentives, and strengthen domestic institutions, to make sure the necessary checks, and balances are in place. Such an approach to reform would help attract more investment - both domestic and foreign - and would accelerate economic growth, and poverty reduction.