The impacts of secondary education reforms on schooling and income of women and men in the Philippines

In 1988 and 1989, the Philippine government implemented free public and subsidized private secondary schooling through two major policies, namely Republic Act (RA) 6655 and RA 6728. This study investigates the long-run impacts of the two policies on schooling attainment and income using a regression discontinuity design (RDD). It draws data from the Annual Poverty Indicators Survey 2008 and 2011. We present two main findings. First, younger cohorts of women and men, who are policy beneficiaries, have significantly higher educational attainment relative to non-beneficiaries. Second, an additional year of schooling significantly increases individual income of women in the informal sector and men in the formal sector. In brief, our findings suggest that the policies are effective in enhancing schooling attainment, but the downstream impacts appear to have accrued substantially to women employed in the informal sector and men employed in the formal sector.