Chart of the week #5: Poverty, inequality and learning outcomes in Tanzania

From my colleagues at Twaweza this week, a set of four charts showing how learning outcomes vary between poor and non-poor children:

Inequality in learning outcomes. Source: Jones et al

So what does it tell us? Well, the main conclusion as far as Tanzania is concerned is that less-poor children do a lot better in the Uwezo tests. In all four charts above, the percentage of children who passed the tests was much higher for non-poor children than for the poor.

This may not sound surprising. But what I think makes it particularly interesting is that in Kenya and Uganda, the difference in pass rates between poor and non-poor children were much smaller. In other words, the disadvantage of being from a poor family in Tanzania is worse than the disadvantage of being from a poor family in Uganda or Kenya.