• Corpus ID: 52994558

The Untapped Math Skills of Working Children in India : Evidence , Possible Explanations , and Implications †

@inproceedings{Banerjee2017TheUM,
  title={The Untapped Math Skills of Working Children in India : Evidence , Possible Explanations , and Implications †},
  author={Abhijit Banerjee and Swati Bhattacharjee and Raghabendra Chattopadhyay and Alejandro Jorge Ganimian},
  year={2017}
}

• A. Banerjee, S. Bhattacharjee, +1 author A. Ganimian
• Published 2017
• Economics

It has been widely documented that many children in India lack basic arithmetic skills, as measured by their capacity to solve subtraction and division problems. We surveyed children working in informal markets in Kolkata, West Bengal, and confirmed that most were unable to solve arithmetic problems as typically presented in school. However, we also found that they were able to perform similar operations when framed as market transactions. This discrepancy was not explained by children’s ability to memorize prices and quantities in market transactions, assistance from others at their shops, reliance on calculation aids, or reading and writing skills. In fact, many children could solve hypothetical transactions of goods that they did not sell. Our results suggest that these children have arithmetic skills that are untapped by the school system. † We thank Rukmini Banerji, Yathish Dhavala, Esther Duflo, Heather Hill, Rashmi Menon, Dick Murnane, Liz Spelke, Jon Star, Anuja Venkatachalam, and Hiro Yoshikawa for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper. A.V.B. and R.C. designed the experiment, S.B. and R.C. implemented the experiment, and A.V.B. and A.J.G. conducted the analyses and wrote up the results. This study was approved by the Massachusetts Institute of technology (MIT) Institutional Review Board (COHUES Protocol No. 1504007082). * Corresponding author. Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics, MIT and Director, Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). E-mail: [e-mail]. ¶ Senior Assistant Editor, Ananda Bazar Patrika. E-mail: [e-mail]. § Professor of Public Policy and Management, Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata. E-mail: [e-mail]. ‡ Assistant Professor of Psychology and Economics, New York University Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. E-mail: [e-mail].