# _<u>Box 9: The costs and benefits of school retrofitting</u>_

<mark>Designing or retrofitting schools to prevent collapse in earthquakes will save lives. Bhatia (2008b) estimates that around 25,000 children died worldwide over the last decade as a result of school collapse. At the same time, education ministries with limited budgets may face the choice between earthquake safety and constructing fewer schools. If fewer schools being built leads to children going without education for lack of space, this, too, is a life and death decision. Not least, educated mothers see considerably lower child mortality amongst their children than do mothers that have not attended school. One estimate from Desai and Alva (1998) suggests that maternal primary education is related to a fourteen percent lower rate of child mortality. If girls are denied education, it is more likely that their own children will die.</mark> <mark>Table Two presents three scenarios regarding the benefits and costs of earthquake proof design/retrofit in terms of child deaths on the assumption that increased school construction costs lead to a proportionate reduction in enrollments. The low scenario uses estimates of design/retrofit that are relatively small (8 percent of construction costs) and a relatively high risk of earthquake deaths in school.</mark><sup>24</sup> <mark>It also assumes a low rate of overall child mortality and fertility (the rates in Turkey) to calculate the impact of primary education on general rates of child mortality amongst the children of primary students. Under such a scenario, the lives saved due to reduced earthquake deaths are more than twice the lives lost because of increased mortality amongst the children of excluded students. But changing the scenario, assuming a lower risk of earthquake death, a higher cost of earthquake proof construction/retrofit (12.5%) a higher rate of fertility and general child mortality (that in India) dramatically alters results. The lives saved due to reduced earthquake deaths are only 12 percent of the lives lost because of increased mortality amongst the children of excluded students. Using a lower earthquake risk, still, and data for Chad, this drops to around one percent.</mark> <mark>This calculation is based on a range of simplifying assumptions. And it does not account for the other benefits of earthquake proofing beyond student deaths. At the same time, it does not account for the other benefits of education beyond reduced child mortality. It assumes that fewer schools being built will lead to a proportionate decline in enrollment –but if more children can be accommodated in each school, this questions the rationale behind a school construction process in the first place. It relies on a single estimate of the benefit of education in terms of reduced child mortality. At the same time, it assumes that retrofit/earthquake proof construction will remove all risk of student death.</mark> <mark>Finally, it would be better to both build more schools and build or retrofit them to withstand earthquakes. But this may not be an option for resource-constrained ministers of education. Furthermore, there may be other interventions that can save children at far lower cost. The Table also presents evidence on the cost per student death averted of retrofit. The low scenario suggests this is only $1,067, comparing very favorably to a range of other child health interventions in developing countries. But the high case suggests a per death avoided cost of $213,000, considerably higher than many alternate approaches.</mark> 24 It is based on the calculation that 2,500 children died a year worldwide over the last ten years, and only 25 million primary students worldwide were in schools at risk of earthquake damage each year –or around four percent of primary-aged children worldwide. This creates an estimate for the percentage chance of death per year for a primary student in schools at risk.

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