# **6.6 Effectiveness and Cost-Effectiveness**

Our effectiveness and cost-effectiveness the of analyses compare community impact _T_ 2 (aspirational videos and m-Learning add-on) with other interventions aimed at imWe use the treatment effects of _T_ 2 as proving learning outcomes in developing countries. it was the intervention that had a significant impact on learning outcomes. Using the metric proposed by Angrist et al. (2020b), we calculated learning-adjusted years of schooling (LAYS). This metric combines educational access and quality; and it allows the comparison across countries using an absolute benchmark. To calculate the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness for this study, we took the following two steps.

First, we converted our aggregate measures of literacy and numeracy skills in LAYS. To facilitate the comparison of our effectiveness and cost-effectiveness results using the same list of educational interventions, this first effectiveness list already uses the 72 interventions that included cost data in Angrist et al. (2020b).<sup>17</sup> Second, we use the cost of our combined intervention to calculate a cost-effectiveness measure that we adjust to country-specific price levels. For this step, we used nominal cost data which is subsequently transformed into 2020 purchasing power parity (PPP) adjusted prices, following JPAL Conducting Cost-effectiveness Analysis guidelines.<sup>18</sup> We then calculated the implied LAYS per US$100 (nominal) and PPP adjusted LAYS per US$100. Finally, we use the latter to compare the cost-effectiveness of our intervention with 72 other interventions, including edtech interventions.

_σ_ Following the above steps, the treatment effects of this study for the target child (0.46 and 0.63 _σ_ for literacy and numeracy, respectively) correspond to 0.57 and 0.79 LAYS, respectively. These metrics fall short of an artificial high-performance benchmark of 0.80, chosen by Angrist et al. (2020b) due to its stability and non-political properties. In terms of relative effectiveness, _T_ 2 ranks 5 _th_ relative to the 72 studies we consider for this comparison. Table 9 shows the twelve interventions with the largest impacts on LAYS. This list includes studies of two edtech interventions evaluated in India, computer-assisted learning by Banerjee et al. (2007) and vouchers for the Mindspark adaptive learning software by Muralidharan et al. (2019).<sup>19</sup> Considering that _T_ 2 had similar effects on literacy and numeracy outcomes for older

> 17The study of Angrist et al. (2020b) uses data of 150 impact evaluations for its effectiveness estimates. It then calculates a cost-effectiveness measure for a subset of 72 interventions for which cost data were available. We compare our effectiveness and cost-effectiveness measures to the same list of 72 interventions.

> 18See more details about this methodology at `https://www.povertyactionlab.org/resource/ conducting-cost-effectiveness-analysis-cea.`

> 19Our _T_ 2 and these two edtech interventions in India share characteristics that Angrist et al. (2020b) note are common among top performing educational interventions, including being multidimensional combined programs and instruction adjusted to the students’ learning level.

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