Custodes Futurifor the advancement of humanity

Educational factor, barrier 1 of 6

Learning poverty

"Learning poverty" is the share of children who cannot read and understand a simple text by age 10.

Evidence

  • Scale. A 2022 report estimated that learning poverty in low- and middle-income countries rose after COVID-19 from a revised pre-pandemic rate of 57% to about 70%. The 57% rate rests on measured learning data, while the 70% figure is a simulation of school closures, so it is less certain (World Bank and partners, 2022).
  • Regional gaps. Latin America and the Caribbean were predicted to reach about 80%, up from around 50% before the pandemic. Sub-Saharan Africa stood at about 89%.
  • Economic cost. The World Bank estimates this generation could lose a combined US$21 trillion in lifetime earnings, about 17% of today's global GDP.
  • What helps. Teaching children at their actual learning level. The evidence is strong, from multiple randomized trials (see Teaching above students' level).

Why it matters: Reading is the foundation for nearly all later learning. A child who cannot read by 10 is cut off from books, the single resource that launched Faraday, Ramanujan, and Einstein.

Proposed and experimental methods

Methods that are proposed, under trial, approved in some places, or tried and then failed. Each shows a stage label and an evidence rating. A stage label shows how far a method has progressed, not whether it works. The stage labels are explained on the educational factor page.

  • Structured pedagogy at national scale (Large trial, B). Teachers receive scripted lesson guides, matched student books, and regular coaching visits. Kenya's Tusome program took this approach nationwide through government structures, and an external evaluation found impacts of 0.6 to 1.0 standard deviations on English and Kiswahili learning (Piper et al., 2018). A review of more than 200 impact evaluations in 52 countries ranked structured pedagogy and teaching to children's learning level among the most cost-effective approaches, up to an order of magnitude more cost-effective than business as usual (Angrist et al., 2025). The Tusome analysis was written by staff of the implementing organization, and an independent endline evaluation found that many teachers had too little time to cover the scripted content.
  • Results-based transfers to municipalities with literacy support, as in Ceará and Sobral, Brazil (Approved but not scaled, B). The state of Ceará shares part of its tax revenue with municipalities according to education results, and also gives them literacy materials, assessments, and technical help. In a comparison of schools on either side of the state border, ninth graders exposed to the reform scored 0.15 standard deviations higher in mathematics and language, and the effect roughly doubled where the state also gave technical assistance (Lautharte et al., 2021). The municipality of Sobral, which set the goal that every student be literate by the end of second grade, now ranks first of more than 5,500 Brazilian municipalities, and 84% of its students reach adequate literacy by the end of third grade, according to World Bank staff (Evans and Loureiro, n.d.). The Sobral turnaround has not been tested with a causal design.
  • Standardized private school chains and outsourced public schools, including Bridge International Academies (Large trial, contested, B for learning gains). In Liberia, management of 93 randomly chosen public schools was handed to eight private operators, which raised learning by 0.18 standard deviations after one year (Romero et al., 2020). After three years the gain had leveled off at about 0.2 standard deviations, dropout rose by 3.3 percentage points from a base of 15%, sexual abuse was not reduced, and operators differed widely (Romero and Sandefur, 2022). In Kenya, a scholarship lottery found that two years at Bridge, which uses tablet-based scripted lessons, raised primary test scores by 0.89 equivalent years of schooling, a result not yet peer reviewed (Gray-Lobe et al., 2022). The World Bank's private lending arm, which exited its stake in Bridge's parent company in March 2022, accepted an independent finding that it had not assessed or adequately addressed child sexual abuse risks at Bridge, and in 2024 approved a remediation plan for survivors in Kenya (IFC, 2024).

Sources cited on this page

  1. World Bank and partners (2022): 70% of 10-year-olds now in learning poverty B Moderate: for the 57% rate, C for the 70% figure
  2. World Bank: Foundational learning brief (2025) B Moderate: agency estimate
  3. Angrist, N., Evans, D. K., Filmer, D., Glennerster, R., Rogers, H., & Sabarwal, S. (2025). How to improve education outcomes most efficiently? A review of the evidence using a unified metric. Journal of Development Economics, 172, 103382. link B Moderate
  4. Gray-Lobe, G., Keats, A., Kremer, M., Mbiti, I., & Ozier, O. (2022). Can education be standardized? Evidence from Kenya (BFI Working Paper No. 2022-68). Becker Friedman Institute for Economics, University of Chicago. link B Moderate
  5. Lautharte, I., de Oliveira, V. H., & Loureiro, A. (2021). Incentives for mayors to improve learning: Evidence from state reforms in Ceará, Brazil (Policy Research Working Paper No. 9509). World Bank. link B Moderate
  6. Piper, B., DeStefano, J., Kinyanjui, E. M., & Ong'ele, S. (2018). Scaling up successfully: Lessons from Kenya's Tusome national literacy program. Journal of Educational Change, 19(3), 293-321. link B Moderate
  7. Romero, M., & Sandefur, J. (2022). Beyond short-term learning gains: The impact of outsourcing schools in Liberia after three years. The Economic Journal, 132(644), 1600-1619. link B Moderate
  8. Romero, M., Sandefur, J., & Sandholtz, W. A. (2020). Outsourcing education: Experimental evidence from Liberia. American Economic Review, 110(2), 364-400. link B Moderate
  9. Angrist, N., Bergman, P., & Matsheng, M. (2022). Experimental evidence on learning using low-tech when school is out. Nature Human Behaviour, 6(7), 941-950. link B Moderate

Every source for this factor is listed on the educational factor page.