ABSTRACT
Education and literacy are widely promoted on theoretical and empirical grounds as means to escape poverty. At the macro level, human capital, especially primary education, contributes to economic growth (Lucas, 1988; World Bank 1993; Barro and Sala-i-Martin, 2004) and in turn to poverty reduction (Dollar and Kraay, 2004). In cross-country and time series data, income, poverty and levels of human wellbeing such as longevity and other health indicators are strongly and positively associated with levels of literacy and education (Schultz 1993, 2002; Sen, 1998). Moreover, micro-data have been argued to show high labour market returns to primary and other education, especially in developing countries (Psacharopoulos, 1994) 2 . In a context of poverty, being illiterate may thus be a considerable disadvantage for an individual, her dependents, and perhaps her wider community.
