Broadcasting Education at Scale: Long-Term Labor Market Impacts of Television-Based Schools

This paper examines the long-term impacts of using information and communication technologies to scale up last-mile educational services. We exploit geographic variation and cohort exposure from 1980 to 2000 to Mexico’s TV-schools–lower secondary schools that substitute on-site specialized teachers with televised lectures, serving over 1.4 million children annually. Cohorts in high TV-school construction areas are 8 percentage points more likely to graduate lower secondary, with increases of 0.4 years of education and 8% in hourly earnings. Labor market returns are comparable to those from standard schools. Impacts are primarily driven by out-of-school children, with higher earning gains in urbanized areas.