MOL

Description

mol computes effective literacy measures that go beyond the standard literacy rate by accounting for household-level literacy externalities. The module calculates:

• Crude Literacy Rate (R): Traditional percentage of literate adults.
• Effective Literacy (Re): Accounts for intrahousehold benefits from having literate members.
• Isolated Illiteracy Rate (I): Measures illiteracy without household support.
• Efficiency Loss (Q): Ranges from 0 to 1, showing literacy gaps.
• Externality-adjusted Literacy Rate (R*): Extended Subramanian measure.

The approach builds on Sen’s work on social indicators, implementing frameworks from Basu and Foster (1998) and extensions by Subramanian (2004).

Examples

* Basic effective literacy measure
mol alfab [fw=weight], house(domicilio)

* With multiple alpha sensitivity parameters
mol alfab [fw=weight], house(domicilio) alpha(.2 .5 .8)

* By region with generated variables
mol alfab [fw=weight], house(domicilio) by(region) gen

* By state with ranking
mol alfab [fw=weight], house(domicilio) by(state) rank

References

• Basu, K. and Foster, J.E. (1998). “On measuring literacy.” Economic Journal, 108(451), 1733–1749.
• Subramanian, S. (2004). “Measuring literacy: some extensions of the Basu-Foster framework.” Journal of Development Economics, 73(1), 453–463.

Citation

Azevedo, J.P. (2009). “MOL: Stata module to evaluate literacy.” Statistical Software Components S456987, Boston College Department of Economics.